


scorpio rising (break the palm reader's hand)

by heavensgate



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Astrology, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Slow Burn, pete is an astrology hoe and patricks in love thats it. thats the whole fic.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22616443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavensgate/pseuds/heavensgate
Summary: Your best friend could be known as downtown Chicago’s infamously eccentric love doctor, but even then, that doesn’t mean he’s smart enough to notice your own affections towards him. Maybe sometimes, okay, a lot of the time, feelings are a lot more complicated than magic.au where pete does astrological matchmaking services in their apartment and is actually kind of good at it & patrick tries to convince him that they’re meant for each other despite what the stars say.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Original Male Character(s), Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 57
Kudos: 41





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title is from scorpio rising by soccer mommy because i was obsessed with it a few months back and one and only by timbaland ft fob bc im always going to be obsessed with that song

Patrick is twenty-one, a fresh college graduate with a useless degree, and new to the worst parts of the Near West Side of downtown Chicago. On his first morning, as an actual resident and not some lost wide-eyed kid visiting from the suburbs, the first thing Patrick notices is how everything is  _ so _ loud and everyone just moves  _ so _ fast. It is a fierce whirlwind of a feeling where it seems like everyone sees right through you and your thick fleece coat; everyone except that one guy who’s holding your hand all throughout it though (the same guy who got you into this situation, but it’s whatever, it’s only a minor issue).

But right now, after a handful of months of living here, Patrick is mostly just dizzy, the whirlwind slowing down to just motion sickness while they’re on the bus back home. Patrick’s head keeps falling towards Pete’s shoulder in half-sleep slumber as the bus speeds and slows down, speeds and slows down, speeds and slows down, hits a pothole and curves sharply, and then speeds and slows down again until Patrick isn’t so sure how long they’ve been here and where his head is.

When Pete had first convinced Patrick to move out here, months ago, a couple of cities ago, this throwaway comment that threw them here to the edges of downtown Chicago’s heart, Patrick had these ideas of busking on the streets, singing love songs that Patrick didn’t really believe in on the weekends and working at a job that he didn’t care for but would have a nice view of the city line. Instead, Pete had gotten the both of them these jobs bussing tables and doing dishes in some pizza chain at the edge of the city. It was a long commute, its hours were bad and the pay was too, but Pete swears that they were going to get out of there one day, he’ll make sure of it. And Patrick believes him because Pete’s always taken care of him, probably takes care of Patrick more than he takes care of himself. Either way, Patrick doesn’t mind, doesn’t mind his hair and clothes and skin to smell like deep-fried pizza oil if it meant Pete was with him smelling just as bad. That was the plan; they didn’t know what they were going to do here, what they wanted to find, who they wanted to be, but the plan had been to be here together so that’s what matters.

It’s late right now, way too late, but they’re not hungry, being surrounded by the smell of pizza all day and seeing all the health violations that go on in the kitchen, can do that to you. Patrick will probably just have to heat week-old leftovers or cook them some instant noodles or something (that’s all they can afford in terms of money, time, and hours of sleep) while Pete did the bills on their dining table. That’s how their nights have gone lately; just a night away from becoming an actual routine, a lifestyle,  _ their _ life, but it might always be Patrick’s favorite part of the day; the soft sound of blues coming from their window, echoes of the jazz bar from a few doors down, Patrick’s voice raw and scratchy from exhaustion but Pete asking him to sing along anyway; moonlight lighting the space on the floor that they lay their backs on because they couldn’t afford a couch, talking about their day even though their day had been the exact same as the other.

Today had been long and bone-weary tiring; that kind of tired that weighs down your eyelids and seeps deep into your bones; it wasn’t just tonight, or last night, it’s that kind of tired that’s there stuck to your mattress when you sleep and still there the next morning when you wake up and it’s been months of it. Pete’s head is on Patrick’s shoulder, just like it usually is when Patrick doesn’t beat him to it. There’s probably an indent in the shape of Pete’s head, or maybe it had always been there, had been ready and waiting for Pete to come into Patrick’s life just so that he could feel complete when Pete put his head there.

“What do you think about the stars?” Pete had asked over the rumbling of the bus, voice sleepy and quiet, leaving Patrick feeling like he’d drank a tablespoon of cough syrup, relaxed in that drowsy way where the warmth wraps itself around you. Patrick tries to think of a reply but then his mind begins to wander, his mind losing itself for a moment to go to this place it only goes to when Patrick doesn’t think too hard or when he’s sleepy just like right now. The warm feeling, it reminds Patrick of that time they drove out here to the city for no reason except to eat deep dish pizza from this place Pete swore by. They had slept in the backseat of Pete’s mom’s car that night with Pete’s arms around him because they were both too tired to make the drive back home. Patrick’s done a lot of things like sneaking out of his dorm room and meeting Pete in the middle of the suburbs and the community college; but that night— that night was the first time Patrick realized he’d follow Pete anywhere as long as he asked Patrick to. It was the way red stoplights glowed on Pete’s skin, the way the night air seems to stick to Pete and all Patrick has to do is inhale the skin between his neck and shoulder to feel okay, it was the way it felt sitting on the passenger seat as Pete told him some bullshit story that Patrick pretends to believe in anyway.

“I don’t think about them,” Patrick admits honestly a heartbeat after Pete asked, when his mind finally was back on track. Pete didn’t seem to notice, and if he did, he was used to Patrick’s wandering head by now; probably understands it because he’s the same way. “Sometimes I look up and I forget that they were there.”

“Me too,” Pete replies softly, not at all scandalized that something bigger than the two of them, this heavenly out of reach thing that was going to outlive the both of them, was something that didn’t matter to Patrick. “But when I do, it makes my heart squeeze, do you get that feeling too?”

“Not really,” Patrick says with a shrug, his shoulders hitting Pete’s; Patrick should write a request to the mayor or start a petition to make public transportation seats bigger than they are now. Patrick can feel the heat of Pete’s body on him and it was making him conscious in a way he couldn’t understand why, it was almost like shyness; that hesitancy and acute awareness in the way you moved into someone else’s space.

Pete shakes his head but he laughs, throwing his head back, the column of his neck glowing gold underneath the train lights. Patrick gulps all of these feelings down. It’s been difficult, more difficult than it used to be when he wasn’t always surrounded by Pete; the smell of him, the warmth of him, the sound of his laugh and voice and muffled crying one room away; just the  _ feel  _ of Pete, of being alive, of living with Pete, it’s been doing things to Patrick’s head lately. This is harder than anything, cuts deeper than his parents’ divorce, aches more than homesickness, scares him more than the thought of dying without meaning anything more than just being another guy walking down the street. This feeling is new, is different, it feels alive inside of him, slowly growing and growing in his chest and one day it’s just going to spill out; this thing that can’t be tamed or stopped.

“Okay, what about astrology? Like horoscopes and shit?” Pete asks him when he’s finished laughing, fingering the hole in Patrick’s jeans, tickling the skin there, that soft spot right on his knee that Pete knows makes Patrick squeamish from years of experience. Patrick swats Pete’s fingers away, face heating from the glare of an elderly couple a few seats away from them. Pete’s fingers then squirm their way into Patrick’s hand instead, linking their fingers together; all of Pete’s skin really is golden underneath bus lights and Patrick finds it hard to look away from them. 

“What’s this really about, Pete?” Patrick asks, not really answering Pete’s question, eyes still stuck on the way Pete’s hand moved inside of his own.

“I just—” Pete says, and he shows his other fist to Patrick, slowly opening it to show a ripped scrap piece of paper torn from this morning’s newspaper. “Bob sent me out to clean some tables and today’s paper was out and this was on it. This page was  _ right _ there.”

“Okay?” Patrick replies, confused, accepting the paper from Pete and holding it gently in between his fingertips because this was something important to Pete.

“I like direction,” Pete says in one breath, like he was embarrassed or shy about it, like he was letting it out before he thought too hard about it and stop himself, but there is an excited smile on his face that Patrick realizes he hasn’t seen in a while; somewhere in between the first night Patrick heard Pete cry a room away and that time Patrick caught Pete looking out the window at two in the morning, Patrick noticed how Pete’s eyes began to dim now and then. “I feel so lost all the time here and I don’t know. A lot of these nights, I’m scared I made the wrong decision dragging you here with me because I just— everything feels so wrong and new and scary and all the fear weighs me down. You’re the only thing that reminds me of home and keeps me from completely losing my mind.

“It’s been you up until this moment,” Pete adds softly as Patrick unfolds the paper, it doesn’t sting, not at all, Patrick doesn’t want Pete to feel like that kind of loneliness. Pete’s hands, still resting on Patrick’s, the rough calluses of Pete’s fingers begin to trace the torn edges of the paper as Pete slides his index finger across it like he was reading. It read, in type 11, Times New Roman,  **_GEMINI (MAY 21 TO JUNE 10) :_ ** _ LOVE IS A TERRIBLE THING TO HATE _ .

It's a beautiful line of thought, like a line from a dream that you try to understand once you’ve woken up, but that’s all it is. Patrick’s grown weary of things like that, is too worn down and jaded over things like hope and love; it doesn’t inspire him the same way it does for Pete. Pete believes in love and faith; Patrick isn’t so sure what he believes in yet, but he’s sure it’s something real. Pete’s the one of them who can see the magic without squinting, Patrick has bad eyesight for everything.

“Is this about Donny breaking up with you?” Patrick asks warily, cautious about the glittery, shining, telltale-manic look in Pete’s eyes. “Because, Pete, come on, it was for the best. We’ve already talked about this.”

After breaking up with Donny because he couldn’t handle the sort of long-distance between the suburbs and downtown, and the chronic sadness and mania that seemed to run through Pete’s blood on the worst days, Pete had gotten into a mess of different hobbies Patrick assumes he read from a Teen Vogue article or Buzzfeed personality test telling him the best way he could get over his soulmate. In the six months that they have moved into their downtown studio that’s even smaller than Patrick’s modest bedroom back home, Pete had a sudden interest in sewing, soap making, and putting together miniature wooden houses; it was starting to get concerning but it was a lot more productive than Pete staring at the wall or out of windows for hours on end so Patrick doesn’t mind the mess of thread on random places and craft glue that sticks to their carpet and the soles of Patrick’s shoes.

But Pete only shakes his head in reply, lower lip jutting out into a pout at Patrick because Pete knows what Patrick’s thinking of. “It’s a sign. The stars were speaking and it felt like I heard them.” Pete says, unaffected by Patrick’s lack of enthusiasm, his voice breathlessly excited as if he was on the brink of discovering something, and maybe he was. “Patrick, we’re made from the stars, we came from them and they know us better than we do.

“It makes me feel like I have a purpose in things, and I realized I want to give love. I don’t know how yet— but I want— I  _ want _ .” Pete says and he lets it linger and settle between them; that want, that desire, Pete lets it fill the both of them up until his point has been made, until Patrick is left wanting too, but for something he doesn’t know the name of yet but he feels it, there on the left side of his chest while he looks at Pete, wide-eyed and mouth curling into a soft smile. “Look at the stars outside.”

Patrick looks out of the dirty bus window and he doesn’t see anything new there, isn’t surprised to see the stars. But then, Patrick thinks that Pete could be made of them, this great shining thing that was always going to mean more than Patrick; he sees a lot of the stars in Pete’s eyes during times like this, glittering against the dark backdrop of Pete’s pupils. It doesn’t make Patrick feel small, he doesn’t feel anything at all really. Maybe Pete’s the only one who’s made of the stars; it’s the way he glows under the moonlight sometimes that makes Patrick blink twice before it disappears. Patrick can’t say the same for himself, he was probably just a victim of changing planets, his Scorpio rising, and his parents; all these criminally inglorious, loosely-connected things that don’t mean much but kind of mean everything if he took a step back to see them— but that is, if Patrick knew what to look for or how to. 

“Patrick,” Pete says, quietly, just to Patrick, not for the ears of anyone else in the train who would bother to pay attention to two grubby-looking boys, not for the ears of the stars that they were admiring, this isn’t for anyone else to know, this secret that Pete has discovered tonight. “I want to bring people and the stars together. I want people to feel love.”

“See, look at this,” Pete says before Patrick could reply, and then he lets go of Patrick’s hand to dig through his bag this time, bringing out the missing whole of today’s crumpled morning paper. Pete unfolds it delicately and holds it so that they could both read it. “ _ Taurus: your wildest dreams are yet to come. _ Patrick, don’t you feel it?”

Patrick stills, tries to reach inside of him for this feeling, for this part of him that can feel whatever Pete wants him to feel. Patrick reads it and there— there, where his heart should be, there is a flicker like candlelight, like lightning in the dark, a gunshot over silence; there it is and it makes his heart squeeze. When Patrick thinks about it, he realizes all of his dreams are about Pete.

Patrick looks up to look at Pete and he doesn’t know if what he felt was the same as Pete but he knows that he feels it: that suddenly big feeling his chest, making him feel like he was way too big for his body, like he was meant for so much more than running away from home to a cheap studio apartment in a bad part of town and washing three-day-old dishes in the morning. It felt like the moon was growing in his ribcage, growing and growing, shining light from beneath his chest to glow around the piece of newspaper; this spotlight that only Patrick could see.

“I think yours was a lot more poetic.” Patrick tries to shrug, looking away, staring at the point in which their hands touch instead; he doesn’t let go of the newspaper that— that there is the touching point.

“It’s not about the words.” Pete replies, shaking his head, “It’s about what reading it makes you feel. It’s supposed to speak to you.”

Slowly, Patrick meets Pete’s gaze again, stopping at Pete’s lip for a fraction of a second before they traveled up to meet Pete’s eyes. There is that feeling again, but it’s an echo of earlier, a dream that was quickly slipping from Patrick’s fingers. Patrick wishes it would disappear completely, it would make sleeping at night easier. 

“I think I can feel it.” Patrick whispers and Pete breaks out into a grin.

“It’s magic.” Pete says, grin growing wider, teeth shining, he looks wiser, older than he should right now, “ever since this morning, ever since I read that, I’ve been seeing and feeling magic everywhere; you just have to squint and sit still to feel it.”

Pete takes both of Patrick’s hands into his own and then they just breathe and watch it, the way their fingers link together. Patrick stills and squints at it, and he sees maybe a glow of warm light spilling out of the way their hands held on to each other; it’s like they were holding tiny little suns in their hands. Patrick feels like, despite only eating one and a half meals a day, despite a leaky ceiling and bad plumbing, despite long commutes in the morning and in the evening, that maybe things will work out between for him, for the two of them. His dreams  _ are  _ yet to come.

That night, right there on the red light stop on the corner of Blue Island Avenue, that was the only time that Patrick ever felt it: that magic Pete talked about.


	2. Chapter 2

_[02/14/2020] VENUS IN ARIES : YOU COME. YOU SEE. YOU CONQUER. YOU KEEP BROKEN HEARTS AS TROPHIES_

* * *

**LOVE CANT SAVE YOU** ( _ONLY MY NEW POWERS CAN)_ — there had been some slight confusion on Patrick’s end the first time Pete told him about his plan because, _I don’t get it. I thought you_ wanted _people to be in love?_ To which Pete had only replied, _Patrick, dear Patrick, just let me be Anakin fucking Skywalker; let me have this, this one time. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense. (_ Reason number three why Patrick loved Pete: Pete is somehow able to have an ego the size of the city while simultaneously living as the biggest dork in the universe).

So **LOVE CAN’T SAVE YOU** has been Pete’s baby project for half a year and his dream career for around two years already; starting from that moment on the bus two years ago when Pete brought out that seemingly innocent newspaper clipping that would change his life. The pseudo-business didn’t have that usual narrative of a rough start or humble beginnings story besides Pete’s very pure intentions— Pete had quickly shot up into the spotlight-starlight of downtown Chicago thanks to some aggressive and violent marketing care of Pete and a little help from Patrick himself. It was easy, almost magic in the way word began to spread of this new way to find love; more personal than swiping through Tinder on a Thursday evening, but a little less mortifying than asking the guy you’ve been sort of in love with for a while now and going through that getting to know phase over a cup of coffee. Within the first two months, Pete had already developed a bit of a cult following that saw him as this sort of savior from the stars, this downtown love doctor, this antichrist bringing that ultra kind of love into the open palms of anyone who reached out to him— all of these things that Pete denies but Patrick sees the pleased smile on Pete’s face whenever he mentions it, and so Patrick tells him that he should and is allowed to be proud; Pete was admittedly, and there are no blindly-in-love-rose-colored-lenses tinting Patrick’s eyesight when he says this, very good at what he does if the already sixty successful couples in the past six months were anything to go by.

Just now, as Patrick enters their apartment, one foot barely inside, he catches a flash of brilliant red that for a heart-stopping half a second, Patrick’s brain tells him one of Pete’s many lavender-scented candles on his crystal altar have finally caught on the curtain and their apartment was on fire just like Patrick has always warned Pete. Now Patrick’s going to be forced to choose what handful of records he’ll save from his burning room— it’s making his heart clench with anxiety and guilt already for thinking of leaving that one Graham Nash album he secretly hated and bought just because he’s a completionist and couldn’t stand a missing album from a collection even though he thinks the album is grossly overrated and disappointing and uninspiring and—

“Pete!” Patrick has already shouted frantically, he also needs to save Pete; he read an article once about how you can’t fall asleep with a candle left lit in a small contained room like their closet of an apartment— something about sucking the oxygen and converting it into carbon monoxide, or was it the other way around? Patrick should google that to confirm. Patrick should also google how long it takes for his mouth to receive a message from his brain because when his brain actually does catch up to reality a second later, Patrick realizes what he thought was a burst of brilliant fire was only the bright red hair of the girl Pete was currently meeting with. Patrick blinks and he wonders how he could have mistaken it as such. Now, he’s left standing by the doorway with his mouth and eyes wide as he stares at her and Pete, the both of them seated in the living room, their knees touching, her hand in Pete’s. Patrick is sure, his face was beginning to warm up, that his face was as red as her hair now, Patrick can probably start his own fire with the way his body was probably blushing all over.

“Patrick,” Pete whines dramatically, voice pitched high, “I’m working. Didn’t you see the _Do Not Disturb_ sign hanging on our doorknob?”

The girl turns around and there is a constellation of facial piercings and freckles on her face, and yes, okay, she’s pretty, but Patrick can’t help but notice she is as exactly the kind of white people crowd Pete’s audience usually makes up: Doc Martens with houndstooth trousers or black tennis skirts, tube tops and grandad polos, poorly done white people dreads, and/or a distinct disregard for showering and masking their smell with designer weed. The girl doesn’t seem all that bothered by the disturbance but Patrick still feels embarrassed for being an interruption before he remembers that this is the shitty apartment he pays half the rent for and not the glamorous psychic room Pete turns it into on weekday afternoons and weekend mornings.

“Yes. Of course,” Patrick says dryly, but only enough for Pete to notice and Pete does because his lip bottom lip juts out at Patrick pleadingly. With a burning, blushing face, Patrick then walks to his room, banging the door loudly behind him. Patrick might be overreacting, but whatever, Pete does this all the time. Pete can’t keep kicking Patrick out every time he has one of his customers here, that’s what actual offices were for, but this isn’t that, it’s a shitty two-bedroom, one-bath apartment located in the better side of downtown Chicago so Patrick is totally justified in this.

Patrick sulkily throws himself on his bed face-first and shouts into it to see if he’ll feel better (he doesn’t). When it doesn’t, Patrick begins to watch cat videos on his twitter timeline; seeing beings that are tinier than him and significantly more psychopathic is always a lot more effective at making him feel better more than anything else; if anything, it inspires him to keep his rage inside until one day he’ll either die or strangle the last person who spoke to him rudely (that someone being Pete most likely). Distantly, Patrick hears the soft sounds of Pete murmuring, low hums that Patrick is only attuned to because he’s sort of hardwired to feel Pete in everything. The buzz of Pete’s voice continues for a few more minutes until it is punctuated with the sound of the wooden chairs scraping against their hardwood floors (this makes Patrick flinch; they really need to get a rug, the scuff marks on their living room floor are ridiculous and Patrick would prefer that they get their full deposit back when their contract runs out) and then there is the sound of footfalls (Pete’s footsteps were actually pretty quiet, which is good in theory, but it also sucks because he has a tendency to wield this power for evil by sneaking up on Patrick in the most unfortunate moments), and then the sound of their front door clicking shut ( _finally_ , this was a home Patrick lived in and not some meet up place for hipster college students with a trust fund and Pete; not that the latter hadn’t acted like one if any of Pete’s college stories were anything to go by).

Patrick’s room couldn’t have been quiet for more than a few seconds when he hears Pete open his door without so much as a knock; Patrick thinks about how he really should have locked it, but let’s be honest here for a second, is that really what he wanted? Patrick only frowns at himself and hides his face underneath his pillow so Pete wouldn’t see how much of a failure Patrick was at being mad at him.

“I cooked dinner, it’s almost ready,” Pete says, voice far away enough that he’s still probably stood by the doorway; a safe distance away from Patrick’s anger. “I also fed Austen and Joni, they’re taking a nap by the window now.”

“So?” Patrick replies dully, mouth full of soft mattress, he feels all of sixteen again with petty teenage angst with no proper direction so it just flies all over the place looking for its next target.

“Patrick,” Pete says, his voice more insistent now, “come outside, please? I’m sorry.”

Patrick turns his head to narrow his eyes at Pete who was still dressed in his ‘work clothes’— that is, heavy eyeliner around his eyes, the weeping moon pendant and broken heart locket dangling from his neck shining over the long black robe that Patrick knows Pete bought in the thrift shop for 30$ after hearing some BS about it belonging to a lady who practiced witchcraft in her basement and was rumored to have been seduced by a vampire, leading to her disappearance on the night of a full moon. There’s a look on Pete’s face, pleading and childish, like Patrick was all of nineteen again and could be easily bought with such looks from Pete; this was the same look that had convinced Patrick to febreeze his armpits and move out of his home and run away with Pete into the city a few years later.

“You’re not expecting any more guests?” Patrick asks and okay fine, all of that was a lie; he still _is_ painfully easy, but he’s not _that_ easy anymore.

“Phoenix was my last one.”

“Her name’s Phoenix?” Patrick says, lips quirking up a bit in amusement despite his annoyance. 

“Don’t be mean.” Pete says reproachfully but he’s smiling too, “She’s sweet. I might set her up with Mick. She has a Venus in Pisces and Mick has a Venus in Virgo. I think the Virgo and Pisces thing is going to work out well— the whole opposites attract thing between them.”

And Patrick, once again, despite himself, feels a surge of fondness for Pete, because how can Patrick stay mad when Pete’s eyes light up like that whenever he talks about what he does; it’s like watching Pete realize all of his dreams have come true over and over again; like all the falling stars Pete had wished on found a home in his eyes now. With a defeated sigh, Patrick pushes himself off the bed with heavy arms that didn’t quite agree with the decision his heart was making right now, “Okay, I’m up.”

“Cool,” Pete grins widely at him, that cloudy look in his eyes whenever Patrick refuses him slowly clearing for the sunlight contained in them to beam at Patrick. Pete glances at the foot of Patrick’s bed and he asks, “What’s in the paper bag? Did you get my froyo on the way home?”

“Uh, yeah. Sort of. Well, no, I wasn’t able to, actually.” Patrick corrects himself, picking up the innocent brown paper bag that had fallen to the floor amidst Patrick’s teenage tantrum. “I— the store didn’t have the frozen yogurt you wanted so I, uh— I got you these instead.”

Patrick hands over the paper bag to Pete and looks at anywhere else that isn’t him. Patrick suddenly feels embarrassed, it’s curling around his stomach to rise to his throat and settle on his tongue. Patrick knows his face must be warming up by again and he only hopes that Pete won’t point it out. Patrick’s hands were sweaty and he self-consciously wipes them on his jeans before sticking them into his pockets. Patrick is suddenly severely interested in his shoes, acutely aware of the sounds of paper bag ruffling across from him, near enough that Patrick could imagine the heat of Pete’s body hitting him and settling into his skin. This feels a lot like middle school when Patrick hand wrote the lyrics of Friday I’m In Love as a way to ask Allie, blonde and blue-eyed and the object of ten-year-old Patrick’s affection, out just because she mentioned that she liked the song. Allie ended up saying yes, but then Patrick hadn’t thought that far and had run away to play with the other boys instead; Patrick might have a tendency to not know how to act when he finally gets things he wants, it’s a recurring pattern anyway and _no_ it isn’t because of his Venus in Aries as Pete often seemed to insist on, it’s just— whatever, it’s just how Patrick is.

“Sweet. You got me sunflowers. Thanks.” Pete says and Patrick finally braves it and steals a look at Pete. Pete is smiling at him, this earnest and honest smile that tugs at all of Patrick’s heartstrings. There is a shy curiosity in the way Pete is looking at him right now, and Patrick knows, is sure, that Pete is thinking if this had been by chance or if Patrick had remembered that off-hand comment Pete had made several weeks ago— _hey, Patrick, do you think I’d look good as a blonde? I just don’t feel emo anymore, you know? I’m digging the color yellow. I could live in it, I think. All my favorite things are golden: sunflowers, yellow starbursts, you_.

Patrick should tell Pete, that he remembered, that he remembers everything Pete says and keeps it there close to his heart so that he’d know the best way to win Pete’s, but he doesn’t. Patrick swallows all of those words down and instead, he replies, “Saw them in the clearance bin on the way out. Our apartment always smells like your weird rose and lavender candles and your crystal altar freaks me out. These are supposed to make our apartment look better. Also, because your froyo was out, so I thought— I thought supermarket flowers on sale would be the next best thing.”

Patrick had a million reasons and then some as to why he bought flowers for Pete, but they’re all lies— there’s only one sincere reason why he did it. The truth is that Patrick had walked around for an hour, scoping for a flower shop that was selling sunflowers when all the shops seemed to suddenly only sell roses and more roses in February. Patrick had finally found this one after a while, this little flower shop hidden away from the busier streets, plain looking from the outside with a board that had seen better days. But the sun seemed to shine brighter on this, making the little storefront glow bright yellow just like the sunflowers on the display window. It only made sense that Patrick spent half their electricity bill buying all the sunflowers there. And sure, maybe Pete wouldn’t have noticed if Patrick had given him supermarket flowers or even plastic flowers, wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, wouldn’t have cared if he did, but Patrick would know. Pete only deserves the best out of what this world can give him.

(So Patrick has been desperately pining over his best friend for two years now, so fucking what? Don’t look at him like that; Patrick is very much well aware that it’s _pathetic_ )

“Thanks ‘Trick,” Pete says softly when he’s done appraising Patrick, bringing it close to his face and smelling it, a small smile playing on his lips, fingers gently thumbing the sunflower’s petals. Patrick knows his own hand smelled like sunflowers from gripping too tight on to them the whole train ride home, if Patrick were to offer his palms, fingers, hands, to Pete, it would just be the same— except the former wouldn’t be fucking weird, _control_ yourself, Patrick.

“I’ll uh, I’ll set the table,” Patrick mumbled, looking down now, unable to meet Pete’s eyes again like there is only so much of his body that can handle the soft looks Pete gives him. Patrick starts towards the doorway but Pete stays rooted in where he stands, stays in his place like he was waiting for something, and Patrick only hesitates for a second because he doesn’t want to make this a big thing. Actually, this wasn’t going to be a thing at all, this was completely normal except for the way that it’s not, but whatever. Patrick crosses the doorway, turning his body so he was chest to chest with Pete for a brief moment, not long enough to feel if Pete’s heart was beating fast the same way he knows his was, but enough for him to feel the warmth and there of Pete, of being so close enough that it’s a physical hurt that he can’t touch Pete in the way that he would want to; the hurt touches Patrick, burns his skin, the way Pete’s should be. All of this in just that split second, Patrick is exhausted from the whiplash of feelings. Was his doorway really that narrow? He really should lock his door from now on, just so that he wouldn’t ever have to slide against Pete like that again. Doorway sizes were now a thing Patrick was going to have to consider in future apartments, this simply won’t do if Pete was going to make _this_ a thing, Patrick was going to die and Pete surely won’t be able to afford to live in the city on his own.

Walking past Pete felt like going to an escape room and losing even if Patrick did actually escape, but Patrick tries not to think about it when he walks to their makeshift dining area where Patrick began to set mismatched cutlery and chipped plates down on their tiny round table pushed to the side next to the refrigerator, his back to Pete who had checked on what he was cooking. It smells good the way home-cooked meals do and it’s distracting so Patrick stares hard at the spoons and forks, how they were missing their pairs, but was still complete in that way that he and Pete will use it later to eat. It’s pretty lame to think, Pete’s the one who’s good at words.

“Need any help?” Pete asks, sliding next to him out of nowhere, and there, there is that warmth again, like Pete was made of the middle of summer (Reason number seventy-three: back then when they shared one mattress in their second apartment, too broke to afford anything better because they decided to try and see if they could survive living in a studio apartment the size of a closet located uptown, Pete had been a great free source of heat during the harshly cold nights).

“No. I, uh, I just finished,” Patrick says, looking up, and his gaze falls on the sunflowers he had brought home in the vase Pete had picked out in the Sunday flea market last week _(this is the only one of its kind, Patrick. It’s a lucky find, just like how I found you. I needed to buy it_ ). It makes a nice sight, their apartment didn’t need it as much as Patrick had exaggerated for them to, but it was nice; it was like a mix of Pete and Patrick, these two things that they bring home that remind them of the other, that this was a place that they shared. Patrick’s heart crawls up to his throat and it makes it difficult to speak or breathe.

“I think we still have around fifteen more minutes before it’s ready.” Pete says, resting his chin on Patrick’s shoulder for a second, his breath tickling his ear, their bodies molding into a familiar shape, “That means there’s time for you to play for me on the piano.”

Patrick sighs and is about to turn Pete down, but when he sees the way Pete looks at him again, all soft pleading eyes and wide mouth curled into a small smile, there is a burst of sadness that cuts across Patrick’s chest for a moment because who is Patrick to Pete for him to look at Patrick like that? Like Patrick— _him_ , all his messiness and shortcomings, all of these were things that Pete sees and wants. But then it all disappears, rolls around his chest like waves before stilling. Patrick just sighs again and the sadness flows out with the air; if the sunflowers were to breathe it in, they would wilt within days.

“Okay,” Patrick says, softly. And they both walk to the piano, the one thing his mom had gifted him when he told her he was moving out of their house and moving into the city with Pete; it had been difficult pay the few extra hundred dollars to transport it every time they moved, but Patrick will never have the heart to give it up. The thought of his mom feels like a whole lifetime and six cities away, back when Patrick only had an outline of an exit plan and an even vaguer idea of an exist plan. Patrick sits down on the piano bench, and as expected, Pete sits next to him, close enough for the sides of their arms to overlap, grazing each other whenever either of them moved; on mattresses in studio apartments, on public transport late at night, on piano benches, Pete always had to be shoulder to shoulder with Patrick; always on the same side, their own two-man army against the world.

“Any requests?” Patrick asks dryly, throwing a half-smile at Pete.

“Just sing one of your love songs for me,” Pete replies simply, throwing a smile back at him (Reason number fifty-two: Pete was easy to please). Patrick catches the smile, then keeps it there in his pocket to bring out for future use; it was just like when Patrick was seven and would collect magic in his backyard; weirdly shaped rocks for good luck, flowers for his mom, dragonflies to make wishes on. Pete’s smile might be the most magical thing of it all, it might save Patrick one day (or maybe it already has).

Automatically, like routine, just like they always do, Patrick’s fingers fall to the keys and they start to play the beginning of a song, slow and simple, quiet, the way evenings like this with Pete feel like. Next to Patrick, he feels the way Pete smooths and relaxes, melting to rest his head on Patrick’s shoulder, and Patrick should tell Pete how it makes it even more difficult to sing because he doesn’t get to expand his chest with all that extra weight, or how it makes it harder to reach the keys, but Patrick doesn’t say anything. The noise from the piano wakes Austen and Joni, the two stray cats they adopted last year, from their nap on the windowsill and now they were gazing at the pair of them with lazy interest, tails moving back and forth, a drumbeat and rhythm to the music Patrick makes.

Patrick closes his eyes for a moment, letting his mouth and fingers get the best of him as he continues to sing for his audience of Pete and their two cats, but there is a brightness out of nowhere that pierces through his eyelids and he opens them. There is late afternoon light filtering through the window, filling the room with its golden syrup. Next to him, Pete sighs in contentment and Patrick realizes that Pete must feel it too— whatever this thing was, whatever the sun was giving them right now. In the New Year, Pete had told Patrick that he should notice the smaller things to be able to feel the magic around him, and this might be it: one of the signs Pete wants him to look out for (and Patrick has been looking, has been sincerely searching for anything to get him to have that feeling of magic he felt on the bus two years ago, but nothing has turned up yet). Patrick wishes he could cup the sunlight in his hands right now and keep it in his pocket just like everything else; maybe this is the magical ingredient Patrick can use to make Pete love him back.

“Life used to be so hard,” Pete sings along, voice quiet enough but pulling Patrick away from his thoughts anyway, “now everything is easy 'cause of you.”

Patrick tries not to let that get to his head no matter how much Patrick also agrees. This is routine, it should be boring at this point, but Patrick still loves this predictable part of their day; it’s changed over the years since they’ve started living together but this part was always going to be the same; the part where Pete asks and Patrick gives. With the room bathed in golden light, their two cats, Pete next to him, the piano, the flowers Patrick bought in the vase Pete bought— everything is good. It’s not the same magic as it was on the bus two years ago, but it’s close enough; when did Patrick’s life end up becoming the lyrics of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song anyway? Life can’t get any better than that. Maybe some feelings can’t ever be felt again.

The song finishes and Patrick pauses for a second, and in this second, he wishes he could tell Pete that Pete was Patrick’s Joni Mitchell, it’s the sort of shit Pete’s a sucker for, but he doesn’t say it. Instead, Patrick kisses the top of Pete’s head, and says, “C’mon, let’s eat.”

And so Pete leads him to their kitchen; their kitchen with the dining set they found on sale at IKEA, the mismatched cutlery and chipped plates because of slippery hands that would shake in that full, braying laugh and drop them whenever Pete washed the dishes; their kitchen, with the meal that Pete cooked, tired from a long day of writing newspaper articles and counting on stars, but still cooking dinner even though Patrick could have bought take out on the way home. Patrick sits down and waits as Pete fusses with dinner one last time, and Patrick thinks how cooking for someone— the very act of it, of nourishing, of feeding, of preparing, of thinking of someone and offering them this one thing, how very genuinely sincere it is. Pete wouldn’t go all the way to make something like this if it were just him in this apartment; Pete could live off energy bars and coffee if he could. Patrick is so caught up trying to push down the love he has for Pete, so hard that he chokes on words sometimes and it leaves him tongue-tied, that he forgets how Pete loved him in his own way; this way where Pete cared for Patrick more than he did himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> horoscope at the beginning is from the costar ig, i owe everything i know abt astrology thanks to them n you'll see a lot of it lol (also if u have the app add me @ middleofsummers!!!!)
> 
> instead of one and only, this fic was originally going to be titled after our house by crosby stills nash and young and i stole a lot of it and didnt even try to hide it (sorry mr nash, i think it's one of the most romantic songs ever n it's only appropriate this chapter was posted after vday)
> 
> and!! i'd love to know what you guys think abt this so far ahhhh or comment down ur signs n charts i wanna know my demographic (geminis dont interact. jk)
> 
> thank u so much for reading! see u nxt weekend :D
> 
> [tumblr](https://supersfade.tumblr.com/post/190841536760/scorpio-rising-break-the-palm-readers-hand)


	3. Chapter 3

_ [02/23/2020] : LIFE DOES NOT EVER CEASE TO HAVE MEANING, EVEN THROUGH SUFFERING, EVEN THROUGH DEATH _

* * *

They eat dinner, Pete has a way with leftover pasta that Patrick loves (Reason number sixteen: Pete’s surprisingly a good cook; better than Patrick anyway which is all that matters. Patrick needs Pete to survive in multiple ways). Pete had gotten this pasta recipe from Patrick’s mom that one time he spent Thanksgiving with Patrick’s family and he had told Patricia how much Patrick talked about how much he missed her cooking all the time. Over time, Pete learned the recipe and switched it up with whatever leftover was rotting in their fridge (Reason number forty: Pete gets along well with Patrick’s mom, Reason number eleven: Pete learns to like and/or likes to learn things that Patrick loves).

“Tell me more about Phoenix and Mick,” Patrick says above the sounds of chewing and metal hitting porcelain, of cars outside their window, of Austen and Joni bickering in the background. Pete immediately lights up, eyes shining, and he sets down his utensils as he began to gesture wildly with his hands.

“Okay, so Mick is a lawyer, I think, or he’s still in law school. Anyway, so he has a Virgo Venus and Sun which makes him pretty boring and emotionally stunted, right?”

“Practical,” Patrick replies automatically, absentmindedly spooning his sauce around his plate, “in the workshop you dragged me to, the word they used was practical.”

Pete waves his hand as if to say whatever, but he beams at Patrick for mentioning that Astrology seminar they went to last month; Patrick didn’t want to go to it, but Pete had given Patrick his best half-moon eyes and that was that. “Okay, fine, practical, boring, whatever. Anyway, Phoenix has an Aquarius Sun and Pisces Venus, which makes her all idealistic and dreamy and everything. She’s everyone’s manic pixie dream girl.

So what I’m thinking is: Mick could give all of Phoenix’s dreams direction and stability, ground her and bring her there— And Phoenix will allow Mick to be more— what’s the word? Help me out here, ‘Trick. What would the seminar say?”

“Phoenix could help him become more uninhibited? Expressive?” Patrick asks, chewing thoughtfully. As much as he pretended to hate  **LOVE CAN’T SAVE YOU** , it really was fun to discuss over dinner, better than any Hollywood movie, any Netflix original, any of Pete's random books cluttered around their apartment floor; this is a thing that becomes something that he and Pete create, this little world with their own characters, narratives, the way Pete’s customers’ lives tangle together like thread on Pete and Patrick’s fingers; it’s the way Pete and Patrick write their own love stories, the happy ending over and over and over and it never gets tiring, can never end in tragedy and tears because Pete and all these other people believe in the stars more than anything.

“Exactly, you get it! I was thinking free but it didn’t sound right. And like, at first, I was thinking,  _ they _ couldn’t possibly work out together. But then, I saw their charts and they both have a Libra Rising— they’ll be into the same things and they’ll know all the things that make the other tick and make each other anxious and like— it’s not the perfect match— they’ll enable each other’s bad habits, but— it’s like— it’s like you know how when you listen to an album for the first time, the first song always makes you feel that pins and needles, rush of serotonin, kind of feeling? It’s like you’re excited for something you don’t know anything about. I think Phoenix and Mick would be that but in, like, couple form. They’d find something new to love about the other person with every listen, with every day they spend together.” Pete says excitedly, his voice rising to fill the room as if it was all so difficult to contain (Reason number seventy-two: Pete loved everything with his whole heart, right up until that point where it tethers on the edge of consuming him; Patrick understands that feeling very much).

There is a heartbeat of silence where Pete shoots Patrick a fond look, his voice a lot quieter when he adds, “Patrick, I swear you could read my mind sometimes. You unknot all the thoughts better than I can anyway.”

Patrick is taken aback for a second, not knowing what to say, so he just keeps quiet. Patrick is suddenly aware of the way Pete is able to freely and easily give such truthful and vulnerable statements; like he didn’t even need to practice it anymore, like it all comes from Pete’s heart no matter what he says. It is painful to think about, this ache in Patrick’s chest that wasn’t hypertension, although Patrick is sorely wishing it was; that would be much easier to solve. 

Pete doesn’t seem to notice Patrick’s silence as Pete continues talking about Phoenix and Mick all night long, and Patrick listens, tries to understand this thing that feels way too big for him; why would the stars bother meddle with something as small as people like them? But Pete finds something in Patrick’s voice, something nobody else finds, and Patrick thinks that if Pete says he could listen to Patrick sing love songs for him all night, Patrick could listen to Pete wax poetry about these strangers like they were stars themselves for just as long.

Being in love with Pete Wentz over the past two years has mostly been settling for loving him in silence; in the achingly quiet tragedy of it all.

* * *

“Okay, fine, I’ll bite.” Patrick sighs an hour later when they were by the sink; the space too small to escape any sort of conversation or the weird excited-vibrating energy radiating off of Pete right now. Patrick was washing while Pete dried— Patrick hated doing the dishes, reminds him too much of that first job that they got in that stupid pizza place. It took Patrick a few tries and he never really got to actually use his Psychology degree, but his job now as an assistant in a non-profit animal clinic has been pretty fun; cleaning out cat shit is heaps better than the sticky, oily feeling of washing plates and cups. Washing the dishes sucked, but like most things, it’s made better with the presence of Pete; the two of them close together in the small space of the kitchen, talking about old jokes and things Pete thought of on the way to the breakfast diner, so it really does cancel out in the end (Reason number nine: Pete only ever leaves their apartment for work stuff, coffee runs, and occasional walks by the park, but he was always telling Patrick these stories about his day and it just makes Patrick smile, feel light inside, that despite everything that’s happened in the past, Pete still finds something to fall in love with in the world).

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pete says innocently, turning away to put their cups back in the cabinet, the beginning of a smile the only thing that Patrick catches, but he could still hear the excitement in Pete’s voice anyway (Reason number fifteen: Pete was a bad liar, it’s the way his voice is too high and his eyes flicker between amusement and guilt).

“Pete, you only cook leftover pasta when we’re celebrating or when you want something from me.” Patrick replies, pushing a wet plate towards Pete’s hands, “Nothing’s worth celebrating, so it’s the latter.”

“Okay, fine, whatever, but you’ll  _ love _ this.” Pete says, unable to keep a secret for that long, “I want to set you up with one of my customers. I met this guy, Wilson, today. His Venus is in Leo so I was just thinking, your Venus is in Aries; it would be like mixing fire with fire so it could end up really fucking bad, but Wilson sings in bars on the weekends and owns a pomeranian and I think he knows a lot about music and is pretentious about it because he’s a Virgo Sun and Pisces Moon so I just thought— I thought you could still love him, you know?”

Patrick stills. Patrick stills so that he could feel the feeling of his heart breaking in two, and then four, and then eight, and so on until it feels like his heart has been crushed to something even smaller than atoms, smaller than whatever stars are made of because Patrick is sure that it can't possibly be something like atoms; stardust might be made up of gas and the dust from Patrick's past lives. Patrick holds his breath and his body, his insides, they come to a halt too. There was a sad simplicity to it all; Patrick brings flowers and Pete gives him a love that he doesn’t want. Patrick’s ears ring with deafening white noise, he thinks he’s gone deaf, but then he remembers he has to reply when Pete speaks again.

“Patrick?” Pete asks, his brow furrowing in concern, “I thought you’d be happier about it. You’re always complaining about single so—”

“I don’t complain.” Patrick says, sharply, “And even if I do, so what? You thought you could just set me up with one of your customers?”

“Well, yeah. It’s literally my job.” Pete says, his voice hardening a little now, the defensiveness creeping up. Pete sets down the plate back on the rack a little too roughly, eyes unable to meet Patrick’s, instead they were stuck to the floor, weighed down by that bitterness that crawls out of Pete’s skin sometimes; most of the time it was unpredictable, you can’t even catch the change in the way Pete moved or spoke, like catching lightning or blinking, but it always spills out of Pete the way it does right now. Pete says that it’s because he had a Mercury in Gemini and Patrick had a Mercury in Taurus that they had a hard time communicating with each other; Patrick thinks it’s just because they hurt each other better than anyone else, can do it without even trying; that for Patrick, the sadness and disappointment coming from Pete is going to  _ always _ hurt more than anything because it’s Pete— he’s the only person Patrick cares to hear their opinion about.

“I’m  _ good _ at what I do.” Pete continues, his voice still possessing that bitter edge sharpness, but there’s hurt in there too.

“It’s not you— it’s me." Patrick cringes, in another life this could mean something else, but Pete doesn't seem to catch it, he's still glowering at a space over Patrick's head.

"Pete, you know I don’t really believe in that stuff. It’s like— it’s the same way I feel about making a Tinder account.” Patrick continues, gently exasperated. Patrick looks away from Pete to glare at the cupboard instead, “I just— I want something organic. I want to fall in love with my best friend, someone who really knows me, someone I chose, not the stars or whatever.”

Patrick’s heart beats fast and loud and hard against his chest as the seconds pass; the beat of his heart timing the beat of the silence that weighs him down from saying anything more. Patrick bites his bottom lip, afraid that if he opened his mouth, his heart will fall out of it and to the floor, where Pete will be able to see everything; read the way Patrick’s veins and arteries crossed like they were palm lines— and then, and then Pete will see everything Pete’s heart has been wanting, Pete will see the hole in it, the one that Patrick has saved and given up just in case Pete ever comes home to Patrick’s heart.

“But I’m your best friend.” Pete finally whines, this anticlimactic statement that kills Patrick because whatever he feels isn’t something that Pete can even feel, isn’t even something in his orbit, something within this solar system, or even the ninth quadrant of whatever fucking galaxy Pete was on where he can’t see Patrick’s feelings for him. Patrick is feeling very small as Pete wipes his damp hands on his jeans to cross his arms petulantly across his chest. “You can’t replace me with someone else.

If Patrick’s heart was broken before, these are the words that stamp it down to the cement and make sure it’s dead. That line hurt, it physically hurt, Patrick thinks his heart breaks even more at it because that had been the truth and it had been so easy for Pete say. Patrick wants to reply,  _ That’s the problem. I just want you. _

But Patrick only sighs, his temples throbbing as his eyes threaten to prick with tears. Thankfully, there are none that form; the rest of his body was a lot better at self-preservation than his heart was, it seemed to have evolved better than it anyway, has evolved past needing and wanting Pete.

“Yeah. I can’t.” Patrick sighs again, defeated, voice brittle like he was one wrong word away from fully falling apart. “Everyone’s always going to be doomed second place to you.”

Patrick doesn’t know why he keeps giving, why he keeps hints and breadcrumbs to Pete who always sees the bigger picture; and no it doesn’t have anything to do with Patrick’s chart, don’t even mention that, it hurts to think how the stars had made sure Pete and Patrick would meet, live and exist together, but not let them  _ be _ together; the stars have made sure that it would be impossible for their own stars to ever align in this lifetime.

Patrick is dying inside, a pity party in his own head, and Pete is still frowning but Pete doesn’t move away from their close proximity despite how they were done washing the dishes now. For a second, for a brief glimmer of hope, Patrick thinks that Pete would get it, what Patrick is trying to tell him. Pete is looking intensely at Patrick, eyes big like half-moons and just as sad; it’s an ocean of green and brown, and Pete is asking for Patrick to drown in it.

But when Pete finally does reply, his voice much lighter, all he says is, “Just think about it, okay? Wilson’s the best that I can give. I think he could be your soulmate if I wasn’t.”

Pete knows all the best ways to break Patrick’s heart, can do it without even trying. It’s like Patrick has fed him all the lines on the script, the manual, the fucking handbook about him and all the fool-proof ways to make his heart ache, and Pete wouldn’t even need it, because breaking Patrick’s heart is one of his many talents besides writing poetry, setting people up, and his marketing skills. Patrick is sorely, desperately begging for a cosmic intervention to just end this moment— the stars have a funny sense of humor but this joke was starting to become old. 

But there is no black hole that swallows Patrick up to save him from his pity, Pete only breaks away from their space and walks towards the living room, falling onto the couch Pete’s mom had given them after finding out they didn’t own one; somewhere around the first three months that they moved into this apartment. There was only a brief, split-second moment of hesitation before Patrick follows Pete there, sitting next to him. And just like that, all is forgiven between the two of them: Pete immediately crawls into Patrick’s space, resting his head on Patrick’s chest, where his heart lies, beating fast but never loud enough for Pete to hear (Reason number sixteen: Pete could never get enough of Patrick; he’s always snuggled up close to him, seated next to him, his body always had to be in physical contact with Patrick’s. But actually, now that Patrick thinks about it, it might not be such a good thing after all; it makes everything very difficult). Everything Pete said was a lie, or maybe just goes to show that he might not know Patrick as well as Pete thinks he does, because the best that Pete can give to Patrick, the one thing that Patrick wants from him, is for him to hold Patrick; and Patrick has that now.

“Thanks, Pete,” Patrick says, softly, carding his fingers through Pete’s hair. “I mean it. Thanks for looking out for me. I really will think about it, okay?”

Pete sighs heavily and throws his head back to look at Patrick, brown eyes so earnestly big Patrick could hide away in them when the world was acting cruel like the way it was being right now, “I wish you’d say yes though,” Pete mumbled, “You’re such a great guy and I just— I just want you to have someone. I want someone to look at you the way I see you. And I’m good at my job. I know Wilson will be that guy for you.

“And besides,” Pete adds, a teasing smile making his mouth curl; this smile that didn’t quite meet Pete’s eyes. “it’ll be fucking tragic if we both die as single cat ladies.”

“I don’t understand why  _ you’re _ single,” at Pete’s words, Patrick replies with the same semisweet smile; the words had come out different though, in Patrick's head, what he really meant to say was,  _ I want you to be with me _ . “I haven’t seen you bring anyone home in a while.”

Pete shrugs his shoulders and reaches for Patrick’s right hand, and begins to gently trace Patrick’s lifelines across his palm, trying to find something new in the way Patrick’s life was set up through skin grooves. After a few seconds, Pete finally replies, “Ever since Donny, I realized that I just don’t think I’d be good at it— being in love. It’s in my hands but I don’t really know what to do with it. And I don’t want to hurt people anymore.”

Patrick is quiet as his mind flashes to his own parents’ divorce, something he never really understood, but he knows he has bad blood now. Like how some people just had those genes that left them predisposed to cancer and sadness; this one, his DNA is just tied together, strung together with flimsy string, organized in a way that meant he was going to be bad at love once he’s had it. Maybe this is the thing that makes Patrick too scared to take that leap to see if Pete will be there to catch him— Patrick knows Pete will catch him, but then neither of them would know what to do with their hands: Pete’s, full of Patrick, and Patrick, clutching air. There’s a lot of Pete’s fear that runs along Patrick too, it just doesn’t show in the same way.

Patrick remembers Pete in his previous relationships, nuclear season with the way they fell in love, too hard, too loud, too dirty. Love was a suicide bomb Pete was attached to, a countdown with the way days were numbered and expiring, instead of counting up into a thing that bloomed into something in the future. The people who were in love with Pete never seemed to last no matter how much Pete tried to cut the red wires from it, no matter how much bits of Pete got hurt in the explosion. Two years ago, it had been love, of loving too much, that had brought Pete into the guidance of the stars. Donny had been the closest Pete had to a soulmate, and all it took were a few hundred miles to cut through that; love really was so flimsy and fragile, it can’t possibly grow on Earth, it was better to leave it in storybooks and television screens and Patrick’s dreams; the Earth after all, was constantly singing into Patrick’s ear to let it trash his love.

“I’m kinda a shitty person,” Pete continues softly, when Patrick doesn’t reply, mostly talking to himself now.

And Patrick thinks of his own depression, different from Pete’s but it’s there. It’s there in the way he can’t let things go, can't put them down, so he’s always carrying the weight of the whole world on his back, how every mountain just seems so small once he’s passed it but there’s an ocean, the sky, the eternal, infinite nothing of space to cross afterward, and it just gets  _ so _ tiring to have so struggle to survive every day. Pete’s depression is like this: summer rain; moments of happiness always clouded over with dark grey skies and thunder.

“You know how I used to worry about it, thinking if love isn’t meant for me.” Pete asks but it’s not a question, “I guess I’m okay with that now. I like bringing people together. I  _ love _ love, it’s okay if I can’t have it for myself anymore. But I just don’t want it to be the same for you.”

“But I love you,” Patrick says, finally speaking up, saying it even though he knows it’s not a love Pete understands; Pete thinks love is meant to be screamed from the top of your lungs, he’s never considered the love that Patrick has, the love that makes him scared someone else will hear and turn it into something dirty. So this is love for Patrick, the way it is so big in the way it is small, small enough to fit on this secondhand couch, in the spaces where Pete and Patrick don’t touch. This is love, and Pete doesn’t understand that.

Selfishly, for a second, while he looked into Pete’s eyes, willing for Pete to get it, Patrick wishes that Pete, for once, would understand what he was saying.

But Pete only smiles at Patrick in reply, real and bright, and again Patrick’s heartbeat slows into a quiet rhythm; the sound of settling. Patrick’s got the better end of the deal, he has Pete in his arms, thinking this love could be enough to save him. It doesn’t matter if Pete doesn’t know this love is here, Patrick just has to keep giving it.

“Love you too, ‘Trick,” Pete says back, pecking Patrick’s temple with a brief, close-mouthed kiss. Patrick wants to ask him,  _ How did you learn how to tell me you loved me in the way I understand it? The way I've learned to hear it from you, and you still can’t hear it when I try to pour all that I feel for you into the silence that I leave? _

But in the end, Patrick only replies, “Enough of the dramatics. Let’s watch a movie?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im a fool; costar is @ middleofsummer lol please add me im nosy as hell
> 
> we're in mercury retrograde until march 10 stay safe & speak softly n delicately. BUT comments n kudos would still be v v v appreciated !!!! please n thank u & see u nxt weekend :)
> 
> [tumblr edit](https://supersfade.tumblr.com/post/190966100275/scorpio-rising-break-the-palm-readers-hand)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was going to be split into two chapters but here it is for the price of one ! im sorry for disappearing for more than a month dvnsdvd
> 
> if u catch the car seat headrest & american pleasure club lyrics & the snippets of a pw blog post u get a socially-distant safe kiss from me

_[02/21/2020] : IF YOU KEEP GIVING ME YOUR EMPTY HANDS; I AM TEMPTED_

* * *

“Did you get lucky last night?” Joe asks Patrick the next morning the second Patrick walks through the door. Joe’s already comfortably seated by the front desk across the room, his lips curled into a knowing smirk. Joe is never late because he lives in an apartment uptown with his girlfriend which gives him more than enough time to think of quips and self-perceived witty insults while he waits for Patrick to arrive. Patrick flips him off but Joe’s grin only grows wider; for a split second Patrick is sorely tempted to not give Joe the extra cup of coffee that he has for him just to be spiteful.

“I just had movie night with Pete,” Patrick replies shortly as he avoids meeting the blinding light of Joe’s amused eyes. Patrick drops his bag to the floor, and kicks it underneath the desk where customers won’t see it. Patrick is still debating if he should give the extra one to Joe or save it for himself as he sets down the two cups of coffee on the desk, the contents sloshing in the cheap paper cups when Joe, who apparently doesn’t care what Patrick thinks, reaches over for it anyway, a smug look on his face as he inhales it.

“Same thing.” Joe snorts, wrapping his hands around the cup for warmth even though the heater was already cranked up to the highest level. Now Patrick was sorely tempted to just kill Joe but Patrick realizes that he can’t because that would mean nobody would answer the phone calls; in the end, Patrick’s crippling social anxiety wins this round for him. Patrick watches with a dark scowl as Joe take what looks like a very satisfying sip of coffee— maybe after a sip, Joe wouldn’t be so fucking rude.

Joe isn’t lying though, Patrick is sure he looks as exhausted as he feels; his eyes crusty with what Pete would call night time magic but what Patrick calls morning dust; his temples are still thrumming with a headache that had matched the vibrations of the bus Patrick took this morning; the music he was listening to on the commute and everything else sounding detached like it was in a room a galaxy away from where he was. Patrick is a respectable young-ish man, he should be doing something better with his free time than arguing over movie selections with Pete for thirty minutes only to settle for Terminator 2 like they _always_ do. Old habits are hard to outgrow; Patrick can barely even bring himself to throw away the thinning hoodie he wore all the time in college that was held together by a few strings of thread. It’s still there at the top of all of Patrick’s clothes; there are nights attached to it; going to bed hungry and staying up all night with Pete, under the covers and watching Terminator 2 without really watching it because Patrick realizes now that he spent most of the movie watching Pete.

So— whatever, the _point_ Patrick is trying to tell himself; everything grows along with Patrick, who grows older like he’s supposed to, the candles and the wrinkles adding up every year, but Patrick doesn’t think he’s changed; not really. Patrick doesn’t think about it any more than that though, the depressive plateau his life has taken isn’t something to think about before he’s finished his first cup of coffee. Maybe he can schedule his mid-life crisis after the fourth cup later today.

“Patrick?” Joe says loudly, like he had been repeating it for a while now and Patrick jumps a little in his seat as he’s thrust back into reality. Patrick remembers that not everyone is like him and Pete; not everyone has a brain that has to be boomeranged back to their head when it drifts into daydreams and apparently mid-life crises as well.

“Sorry,” Patrick replies, stifling a yawn without actually bothering to cover it with the palm of his hand. To Patrick’s small satisfaction, Joe yawns too.

“You’re such an asshole.” Joe mutters without any heat, his mouth still curved. “Dylan told me to tell you to meet her in the back when you got here. She’s going to teach you this trick she does with the girls to calm them down.”

Patrick opens his mouth to reply, but at that second, the phone rings between him and Joe. Joe looks at Patrick but Patrick is already standing up, grabbing his gloves and jacket from the back of his chair, before Joe could say anything.

“Patrick, you’re an asshole,” Joe whines just as Patrick escapes to the back door, “you know it’s your turn to answer the call.”

“Dylan’s meeting me,” Patrick calls behind his shoulder, grinning at Joe. “This is payback.”

Patrick hears Joe’s muttering of swears mix with the phone ringing before the door swings shut, and then it’s just silent here. Patrick smiles in satisfaction to himself and greets the cats who were allowed to roam around a good morning. When Patrick gets to the back room where they kept the other cats, Dylan still isn’t there, running late probably which was unlike her, but Patrick doesn’t think too hard about it. Patrick begins without her anyway, grabbing the bag of dry food off the floor behind the door.

“Good morning, Miss Peanut. Did you sleep well last night?” Patrick coos at the first cage, sticking his finger in the cage and tickling the calico cat’s belly which was unwelcome as usual as she stalks to the other side of the cage, far enough where Patrick’s fingers can’t reach her. Peanut does meow in acknowledgment though so Patrick considers it a win; the first month Patrick was here all Peanut did was hiss at him.

“Oh, really, pretty girl?” Patrick replies, reaching above her cage for her bowl, “That’s good to hear.”

Patrick is about to pour in the dry food into Peanut’s bowl when he feels his phone vibrate in his pocket; once, twice, three messages— all from Pete if Patrick could bet his life on it. It was almost 9, around the time when Pete rolled out of the living room couch to read Patrick’s horoscope on the morning newspaper even though he says that newspapers aren’t a reliable source and are just piles of shit (but Patrick knows Pete doesn’t really mean it, Pete still has their horoscopes from two years ago stuck to the wall of their living room). After a second of hesitation, Patrick decides to ignore the texts and pours out Peanut’s food. Patrick decided at that moment that everything that makes him feel like oceans pulling in his chest, these waves upon waves of feelings, are only to be considered after more than a cup of coffee from now on.

So Patrick begins to sing to the rest of the cats in the room, his quiet voice slowly filling the room as he begins to get into it. On Monday mornings, Patrick sings them Jazz; it takes Patrick back to that first downtown apartment he and Pete shared, a reminder of why he’s doing all this even though he can never put the feelings and answer into words; sometimes music is enough to capture it all. Patrick throws out their dirty litter and replaces it with new ones, refills their bowls, and changes the water. Occasionally Patrick would stroke a cat that was looking a little lonelier than it does. To Patrick's delight, Apple, the sweet tabby cat with eyes like baby worlds they found three months ago, meows along as Patrick sings; Patrick ignores how it also could have just been her begging for food when she saw Patrick nearing her cage. In no time, Patrick was finished and he was turning around to clean up the mess he made when he saw Dylan by the doorway, this small smile on her freckled face.

“How long were you standing there like a creep?” Patrick asks, matching her smile, throwing the empty sack of dry food into the trash can.

“Long enough,” Dylan shrugs, “you looked like you were handling the girls well.”

“Joe said you were going to teach me some tricks?” Patrick asks innocently; all of the cats have been well accounted for, a vast improvement to when Patrick first started and had millions of little scratches up and down his arms.

Dylan only rolls her eyes at the smug look Patrick has on his face, but she’s still grinning, “I was going to teach you some, but I think you’ve got everything under control. I’m leaving them with good hands after all. I think they all pretty much hate Joe.”

“Leaving?” Patrick asks, his mouth falling open in confusion. Patrick stops what he’s doing and looks, really looks, at Dylan right now. 

“Ah. Yeah. I thought you knew.” Dylan replies delicately, mouth curving into what looked like a small frown, “My girlfriend and I are moving back to her hometown, she wanted to be nearer to her parents.”

“I guess I must have missed that,” Patrick says quietly. Patrick feels a sudden flicker of loneliness and sadness; Dylan was funny and smart, she was pretty much a fixture in the clinic. Dylan had already been here a while when Patrick started barely a year ago. Patrick had always assumed she’d be with him and Joe forever. Maybe he’d have to bump up his midlife crisis to an earlier time— like right now, at this moment.

“Congratulations.” Patrick adds sincerely after a pause, but for some reason it feels like the wrong thing to say. Patrick _does_ mean it, but there’s this look that flashes across Dylan’s face again as he says it, like she doesn’t quite believe him.

“Thanks.” Dylan says as she crouches down to peek into the cage that held these stray kittens someone had found in a box next to a dumpster; Patrick remembers how his heart had ached hearing them cry, his heart still aches at the thought of it. Patrick watches Dylan stroke and murmur at the kittens while the awkward silence that appeared out of nowhere hangs between them. There is something on Dylan’s face that makes all the words he wants to say remain on the tip of his tongue.

“I don’t know why I’m about to say this. Lord forgive me.” Dylan mutters, breaking the silence, not looking at Patrick, talking to herself more than she was to him. Silence hangs over the two of them, long enough that Patrick is beginning to think she was never going to say it, when finally, Dylan turns to look at Patrick; her face isn’t sad as much as it is peaceful, this soft look on it as she smiles at Patrick.

“You know, I saw you with a bunch of sunflowers yesterday.” Dylan says quietly, “It made me think of the time when we had that sort of fling or like when I used to have a thing for you. I used to _really_ really like you, way more than you liked me.”

Patrick remains silent as Dylan laughed, and it wasn’t unkind, but it sounded sad to Patrick anyway in the way that _she_ was happy and Patrick was— well, he was sort of _not_ happy. “Even when we slept together that one night, I still felt like— like I don’t know. It felt like I was still waiting for you to notice me.” Dylan admits in a voice that isn’t torn up about it despite what she’s saying, “I don’t know. Seeing you with those flowers for someone just brought me back. I always knew you had a big heart. It just didn’t belong to me.”

There is a heartbeat of silence as Dylan’s brown eyes stay fixated on Patrick’s face; it’s over now, whatever she felt for him, Patrick sees it in the way she looks at him; there is nothing there for Patrick to see.

“I’m really sorry.” Patrick finally says softly, there isn’t anything else he could say. Patrick is very much embarrassed, can feel the way his cheeks are burning up. There is guilt tearing up his insides at how he barely remembers the night she was talking about; that time the three of them went drinking and they, without Joe, had gone home to her apartment. Patrick hates that guy that he was. “I didn’t— I didn’t realize you felt that way about me.”

“It’s whatever.” Dylan assures him, “I promise I’m not regretting anything. My girlfriend is like the sweetest girl ever and I would choose her over anyone any day.”

Dylan then stands up and offers a hand to Patrick to pull him up. “Wow, that felt good to say.” she says with a relieved laugh. “It feels good to finally have that off my chest.”

“I really am sorry.” Patrick repeats, not knowing what else to say.

“Stop that,” Dylan says and she’s still smiling. “Go out to the front with Joe. I’ll stay in here and pretend to do something so that you could stop being weird. When I get back, you better be back to normal.”

Patrick jerks out a nod and walks out the door as fast as he could without it coming off as rude. When Patrick gets back to the front desk, Joe is on the phone. So there was nothing to do except to pause, wait, and _think_ ; to be left alone with his thoughts. Patrick is in the middle of this crisis, the world slowly chipping away like it does in movies, while Joe was seated next to him, completely unaware of Patrick's melodrama.

“Did you know?” Patrick asked in a quiet voice when Joe was finally done with the phone call.

“Know what?” Joe asks, genuinely curious, a confused frown on his mouth. “Dude, are you alright? You look like— what are you freaked out about?”

“Did you know that Dylan liked me?” Patrick asked and he tried not to cringe at how _high school_ it sounded. Jesus, has Patrick grown-up or not.

Joe laughed but then he shot Patrick a nervous look when Patrick didn’t laugh along. “Please tell me you’re not going to try and ruin Dylan’s relationship.”

“What? No!” Patrick says defensively.

“Because that’s what it sounds like.” Joe says with a frown, “Don’t bring her into this Patrick. She used to be really into you.”

“I didn’t even know! How come I didn’t know?”

“The same reason why Pete still doesn’t know why you like him?”

Patrick is sour at that, “Oh, shut up. It’s different. I’m happy with how my relationship with Pete is right now.”

Joe’s eyebrow raises, lips pursed, and he looks more amused than anything now, and Patrick hates it; he deserves this for being so torn up about Dylan leaving and getting better while he stays the same. This is it: this is his mid-life crisis making its debut appearance and it floods Patrick with a mess of feelings. Patrick just grunts at Joe and leaves him to answer the phone as it begins to ring again. Patrick escapes to the alley behind the vet office and he sorely wishes he had made a habit out of smoking when he was younger just so that he had something to do with his hands; now he’s just left clutching his fists around nothing, his hands empty except for that weird frustration that he has, this thing Patrick isn’t sure where it came from. Patrick looks up and the sky is just an ugly February winter blue, no gray clouds opening up to swallow him or to spit out rain. It makes Patrick sadder, angrier; in the end, there’s really nothing to be sad about in this situation.

Patrick feels like he’s losing his mind a little. It’s not that he _wants_ Dylan, but he’s thinking maybe he should? Maybe love isn’t the thing he’s twisted into what he feels for Pete. Maybe love is the way Dylan had looked like, the way the yellow lights of her room made her glow; maybe it’s not Dylan, maybe it was the girl from the coffee shop who slipped in her number in Patrick’s hands last week; maybe it was Allie from high school who he kissed on his front porch step. Patrick remembers being sixteen and thinking that the way she kissed him was what love would feel like for the rest of his life; that was before he met Pete though.

In his pocket, his phone vibrates; probably another message from Pete which reminds Patrick of the earlier ones Pete had sent (Reason number seven: Pete was never afraid to double, triple, whatever text. Words just spilled out of Pete and he always had to share it). Patrick pulls his phone out and the most recent text read, **Pete** : _im feeling bad vibes from u all the way from here. Movie nite pt 2 or is it too soon?? U can pick the movie. Feel better._

Patrick frowns at it, there is a tug in his heart that makes him wish this was true; that he and Pete were connected through the madness and Pete could feel him all the way home. Patrick wishes, more than anything else, that magic was real and not some freak coincidence that just falls into his open palms whenever he asks for a sign. Patrick’s heart is still tugging in his chest, this thing that is demanding to be free or at least to die, and he reads the texts that he had ignored earlier.

 **Pete:** _morning paper horoscope said, when you split the heart open, what comes out isn't blood_

 **Pete:** _pretty metal even though it’s complete bullshit, but u can still keep it if you want._

 **Pete:** _if you keep giving me your empty hands, I am tempted_

 **Pete:** _that one is_ _my horoscope for u._

Patrick doesn’t bother to reply, when Patrick pushes his phone down into his jean pocket, it feels heavier than it did before; probably because Patrick’s finally found the strength to push everything he’s feeling right now. No matter how hard he’s repressed it though, the whole day, Patrick is reminded of it, his midlife crisis lasting throughout his shift until the commute home. Right up to that moment when he’s putting his key into his and Pete’s door; the feeling has faded to a dull, numb, almost-nothing; when he’s home he doesn’t have to pretend to be what the world wanted him to be.

* * *

It’s almost midnight and Patrick has an early shift the next day now that they were one person down in the clinic, but he’s not in bed as he should be. Instead, Patrick and Pete are lying on the couch, their faces bathed in the dim blue light of Patrick’s laptop, their heads touching, close together because they’re sharing Patrick’s earphones. They are so close that Patrick can feel the week-old stubble on Pete’s jaw that distracts him every time it moves for Pete to make a braying, loud laugh, or whenever Pete whispers something in his ear. They don’t need to share earphones, they can play the movie with Pete’s very expensive Bluetooth speakers or with the laptop’s crappy built-in speakers, but it never seemed to cross their minds to outgrow this routine. The world is very small like this, Patrick can live in this forever; the laptop screen as their sunlight, exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide with Pete, Pete being a conduit for Patrick’s love.

Pete is watching the screen, Patrick is watching Pete. There is a brief flicker of blue light on Pete’s face that appears after half a second of darkness, and then Patrick blinks and everything is back to normal, but something about that sight feels like a rip in the time-space continuum. And there it was again— Pete’s face in the dark; when God had said let there be light but in reverse. They don’t need the light; there is lightning on Pete’s face, the room is full of that sound, there is electricity vibrating on Patrick’s tongue. Patrick suddenly feels very brave.

“What did you mean earlier?” Patrick asks Pete, making sure Pete’s face was angled away from him. Patrick’s eyes follow the frown on Pete’s face, the furrow of his brow, the wrinkles on his forehead as Pete tried to watch the movie. If Pete turned his head for even a fraction of an inch and saw the way Patrick was looking at him right now, it would give everything away. Patrick holds his breath; the air smells distinctly like the way it does after a rain shower.

“Hmm?” Pete murmurs in reply, distracted, brown eyes reflecting golden-yellow, still fixated on the screen.

“The horoscope from this morning.”

“Oh,” Pete says, and it feels loaded and heavy. Patrick is uncomfortable with the weight of it, he can feel the way it weighs down Pete’s tongue; or maybe he just thinks too much about Pete’s tongue. What is it with today and heavy conversation? Patrick decides not to ask Pete that, lest he gets a lecture about one of the planets being in a Gatorade or whatever it’s called. “The thing I texted you?”

“Yeah,” Patrick replies slowly, cautiously, delicately; Patrick isn’t sure if he’s imagining the sound of thunder behind his ear.

“Hm,” is all Pete says for two heartbeats, three heartbeats, four heartbeats, but he still hasn’t turned his head to face Patrick. This feels dangerous; a game of chicken with consequences if Patrick looked away and if Pete looked _his_ way. Patrick’s throat constricts at the imaginary flood of ocean water spilling into it.

“You know I only talk from my heart no matter what I say.” Pete finally answers, his voice soft; and Patrick can’t help but desperately think that this was the right line at the wrong time. “You need to lose everything but yourself. I’m just giving you something to have faith in so you can leap over it.”

“Oh,” Patrick replies softly, echoing the weight of Pete’s voice earlier; there is a lump in his throat; it is difficult to speak. Patrick doesn't understand it, in fact, it leaves him more confused. Patrick is also unsure of how to make sense of the way he’s feeling right now; the tightness of his chest, the heaviness of his tongue, the rapid beating of his heart, his sweaty palms, fevered skin. It leaves Patrick lightheaded and dizzy; directionless; the room is spinning; Patrick feels like he’s in the middle of a thunderstorm, right there at the very heart of it.

“You’ve never asked me to explain my horoscopes to you before,” Pete says and then it all stops spinning (Reason number seventy-two: Pete didn’t know how to sing but his voice still sounds a lot like what music feels like). There is a curve to Pete’s mouth as he says it; somewhere between a laugh and frown. Patrick isn’t sure which, it may be a trick of the light; or maybe Pete isn’t so sure how to make sense of his own feelings too.

“I—” Patrick starts to explain and then he stops for an awkwardly long time, unsure what to say. Pete doesn’t call him out on it. “I guess I never thought to ask you.”

There is a flicker of movement and Patrick catches the way Pete is about to face him. Patrick takes this as his cue to face the screen, away from Pete; Patrick feels like he’s lost something, but he’s too afraid to have it in his hands anyway. Feeling Pete’s gaze on him is all the reply Patrick needs; Pete doesn’t have to say anything; his mouth doesn’t have to move; he is telling Patrick something now, but Patrick isn’t sure if he understands it.

“I got that line from the radio.” Pete explains quietly as Patrick watches him from the corner of his eye, “I didn’t understand what he was singing, but it reminded me of you. So I stole it for you. It was mine and now it’s yours.”

Patrick’s eyes don’t move away, not this time; he is going to stay fixated to the screen. If Patrick doesn’t see the way Pete looks at him right now, nothing will be lost. The movie continues but Patrick doesn’t remember anything about it, the scenes and lights just burn through his eyelids as he pretends he knows what’s happening. Patrick doesn’t forget that Pete is there, is unable to no matter how desperately he wants to. So when Pete decides to interrupt Patrick’s facade with a sharp poke to Patrick’s cheek to grab his attention, it is truly unnecessary; Patrick has been hyper-aware ever since; Patrick aches to tell him that Pete’s crawled and squeezed himself into all of Patrick’s thoughts.

Patrick, immune to all of the worst parts of Pete (but definitely not the better ones), ignores him. Pete continues, a steady onslaught of aggressive poking in the softer parts of Patrick like his sides and nose. After a particularly painful jab on his arm, Patrick fixes Pete a glare and shoves at him roughly, hard enough that Pete could have fallen off the couch if he wasn’t so tightly wound around Patrick.

“What is your problem?” Patrick asks darkly as the voices of the actors carry on in his left ear; he is still too soft and raw, tender, over earlier; and maybe it aches a little that Pete doesn’t know the effect he has on Patrick; how just a brush of skin against skin, the sight of his mouth, making prolonged eye contact as the silence stretches on, how all of these things and more make Patrick feel like he’s drowning, there is still saltwater on his tongue and ocean water in his lungs

“I’m bored now,” Pete replies, pouting, pausing the movie without even looking at the laptop screen. “French movies are so boring. I shouldn’t have let you choose the movie tonight.”

“If you're so bored, then you can go to bed,” Patrick snaps without much heat, even though he might agree with Pete at this point; he wasn’t going to admit it though.

“Not sleepy yet and you’ll still be awake,” Pete replies petulantly. “Can I pull a tarot for you? I wanna practice. I know you don’t believe in that stuff,” Pete pauses, rolls his eyes, but he smiles at Patrick to show he wasn’t really mad. Patrick is aching once again at the sight of it (Reason number twelve: this one, this specific smile that Pete has on his face, it feels like Patrick’s looked up to see the sun after a very long time of darkness; it almost hurts to), “but I like giving you some sort of direction. It’s all psychology, man. You’re going to do things subconsciously, so I want to bring it into your consciousness.”

Patrick looks up to the ceiling, prays to any God who will listen to him right now to give him the strength to be able to refuse Pete for once in his very miserable life, but instead, he only gets a very insistent and violent poke to the cheek care of Pete himself.

“Do not bring the sciences into your weird witchcraft, Pete. I'm the one with the psychology degree here. Meanwhile, you got a C in gen psych. ” Patrick finally says, his best try at making his voice sound stern; Patrick shouldn’t give this up so easily, he knows that. Patrick has been in a weird mood ever since earlier this morning with Dylan, like something is keeping his tongue tied, preventing him from anything besides small talk. Patrick knows that if he doesn’t talk about his feelings soon, sooner or later he’s going to go off like too-soon fireworks, blooming and then exploding into something that was only there to ruin something else; but Patrick is a master at repression, it’s practically an art form by now, so he just stores it in a drawer in his heart.

Patrick doesn’t say anything more, instead he’s already fallen off the couch to crawl towards the part of their living room which acts as Pete’s workspace, the movie forgotten, already at the back of his mind. Pete’s space is made up like a Petra Collins bedroom; dreamy, artfully cluttered with crystals and essential oils, posters on the wall of constellations and ripped morning paper horoscopes that don’t mean much but mean everything to the two of them because those are the ones that started it all. Everything is one heartbeat away from being tacky— but then it’s Pete, who believes in this thing with his whole heart so it comes off as charming more than anything. Separating it from the living room is a divider, thrifted, just like most of everything that Pete has bought for his space, down to the wooden table and thin cushions on the floor, the aforementioned tarot cards. The only thing that’s new was the tapestry Patrick had bought for Pete last Christmas, this gorgeous, sun and moon tapestry where the two met in the middle and shine over a golden sky and green umbrella trees. When Pete opened it on Christmas day, he said this was exactly what he had been looking for, claiming that he’s dreamt about this exact same tapestry despite never having seen it before in real life. This is just a continuing theme in Patrick’s life where he wants to give all of Pete’s dreams in a package, in a box, in his hands outstretched to offer to him anytime Pete asks or is brave enough to dream for something.

It is an echo of what Pete had given to Patrick earlier this morning; except Patrick has continued the rest of the song Pete wasn’t able to catch. Patrick wants Pete to keep giving his empty hands to Patrick so that Patrick could put magic in them; so Patrick could put flowers and love and babymoons and maybe his own hands in it too someday.

That’s probably how the song goes. Patrick is sure of it, it’s his after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is jus me talking abt my feelings n whats been happening lol u dont have to read it but it's an explanation i guess to why this took so long. my depression rly hit hard for me this past month; march has consistently been difficult for me in the past few yrs and the pandemic and the sociopolitical issues my country is experiencing right now just makes me feel frustrated and hopeless.
> 
> i feel rly lost/aimless writing this fic and kept putting off writing it but what i want to say is that reading ur comments in the last chapter rly reassured me and comforted me surrounding everything thats happening atm; im sincere when i say it means the world to me that people read the things i write. so thank u thank u thank u for making my days a better & pulling me out of it, i usually like to reply comments when i update but i couldnt stop myselv djfnjkdf
> 
> i have like the nxt 3 chapters drafted so schedule should mostly be back to normal ! 
> 
> **more importantly, i talked more abt this in the[tumblr post](https://supersfade.tumblr.com/post/614221487787982848/hi-chapter-4-is-up-02212020-if-you-keep) for this chapter and i hope if u dont read this whole thing that u read this part at least. i wasnt comfortable posting fic bc of how serious everything is at the moment but i realized that i have a small-ish reach within here and im hoping that i can make the smallest difference; im hoping that if u guys are able to, to donate even just a small amount to some charities that im linking below: **
> 
> [PGH fundraising campaign](https://twitter.com/FILOSEY021197/status/1244129462255366144)  
> [ PPE Suits](https://twitter.com/FILOSEY021197/status/1244132128733839361)  
> [ Philippine Red Cross ](https://twitter.com/FILOSEY021197/status/1244132969524023296)  
> [Paglingap](https://twitter.com/FILOSEY021197/status/1244265144978268166)
> 
> *all of these accept paypal
> 
> hope you and your loved ones are safe and well during this time ! thank you for attending my soap box


	5. Chapter 5

Pete and Patrick sit across from each other on the pillows on the floor, too thin to be comfortable or functionable, but their knees touch underneath the table and so Patrick is vibrating with the feeling, completely unaware of the uncomfortable hardwood floor underneath him. This part of the evening was new enough to still be something faintly exciting; this was an idea that Pete had been playing around with, of expanding his business to do tarot card readings.

Like all of Pete’s ideas, this had started out as a vague thought that he wasted his time on dreaming about instead of writing his news pieces, which then eventually grows to become an entity on its own; this is how myths and heroes are made probably. Patrick used to wake up in the middle of the night and find Pete on their dining table reading forum boards from 2003 about what the best tarot decks were, with the refrigerator door half open, pooling light around him. There were mornings when Patrick would find on the back of old utility bills, on the cramped spaces where Pete could fit into it, there were addresses and deck names and notes in Pete’s sloppy handwriting (Patrick’s favorite being—  _ note to self: learn how to lucid dream _ ). There was another time, this one afternoon on the commute back home, Patrick stopped by a bookshop and bought Pete three books about the occult and witchcraft, and Patrick thought about the blinding smile Pete would give him and just the thought of it lit up the road to home, but it still wasn’t close to the real thing— that one, that smile Pete gave him, that was how summer felt like on Patrick’s skin. So the idea grew and when Pete finally decided on a deck, they both realized that the only thing missing was who to test it on so, of course, this meant Pete ended up using Patrick as a guinea pig for weaving colorful narratives about the cards that run through his fingers.

“So, what’s the question you’re looking for an answer to right now?” Pete asks as he delicately brings out the deck of cards from its wooden box, burnt at the edges for reasons they will never know.

Patrick shrugs and he picks at the loose thread of his sweater, thinks about that one Weezer song and how Pete has this way of leaving all of Patrick undone but only to leave him cold afterwards. Patrick thinks about this morning, of Dylan and back alleys, of vices that Patrick should have picked up during his time in university, of the stray kittens that were found in a box; it all makes it difficult to speak. Patrick shakes his head and frowns, but Pete touches the back of his hand, and it’s barely a brush of skin against skin, but every part of him that Pete touches calms down; all those nerve endings short circuit and die, there is no electricity underneath Patrick’s skin, only this aching desire that feels a lot like the morning after the best night of your life, this feeling that you know you’ll be chasing forever.

“I don’t know,” Patrick answers softly, surprised by the quiet sincerity in his voice. "I guess I’m feeling a little lost. What should I do?”

Pete’s head is bowed down and he lifts his eyes to look at Patrick gently; there is something so young about Pete in this moment; of the way this feels like those time when he would drive Patrick back to the dorms and they’d talk about their future right there in the parking lot, everything felt enough, that distance between the passenger seat and the driver’s seat; and the emphasis on  _ their future _ because even way back when, Patrick knew his and Pete’s lives were always going to be intertwined and messily knotted around each other like that. Patrick is expecting Pete to say something but Pete only smiles at him, his mouth slowly curving around the corners, and Patrick suddenly doesn’t care anymore how his life is going to turn out.

Patrick’s eyes are drawn to Pete’s hands as Pete begins to shuffle the card deck. The deck was purchased in one of the lesser-known antique thrift shops near the suburbs, this dimly lit place lined with dust and trinkets on rich wooden desks and bookcases. The shop had smelled faintly of rosewood and tobacco, and Patrick could sometimes smell it on the cards still. The cards are old, wrinkled, and dog-eared, heavily lined like veins running through it like it had once been alive; but the drawings on it were handpainted and the colors were still vibrant. Images flash as Patrick tries to follow them, of three women laughing under a sky of stars, of the weeping moon that Pete uses for everything now, of two men underneath a tree with a golden summer sky behind them.

Pete finally finishes shuffling the cards and then spreads them towards Patrick, the quietly intense look on his face being broken when he looks up at Patrick and teases in his best Disney hag that’s actually the villain impression, “Pick a card, any card, my sweet.”

Patrick bites his bottom lip to keep himself from laughing, but it’s all useless because he’s smiling anyway. Patrick points at the card nearest to Pete’s hand, only for that brief second of skin to skin contact. Pete hasn’t noticed yet, but this is how Patrick has been choosing his cards; Pete has remained unaware of Patrick’s affections as usual.

Pete then gingerly picks up the card and flips it to the other side.  _ World card  _ the label on it reads. Patrick hasn’t drawn this one yet and he feels a pull towards the image on it. Four winged animals are painted on the corners, all painted with violent and lined strokes, done hastily and without much direction; but still forming this bigger, cohesive piece where Patrick thinks he’d be able to  _ feel _ them, their skin, feathers, fur, if he were to touch the card. In the center, there is a much more delicate painting of what looked like a woman, bathed in gentle pale lavender and baby blue strokes, in her delicate hands were two sticks that seemed to somehow glow under the fluorescent lights of their living room; almost like magic. Surrounding the woman is a circle of leaves, its strokes more broad and sharp, lacking the delicacy that the painter had taken when painting the angel in the center, but with much more care than the creatures that surrounded her. Looking at it feels heavy, the lump in Patrick’s throat falling into an endless rollercoaster of his stomach that was knotting and unknotting itself; this feeling is new too.

“Huh.” Pete mutters to himself, biting his bottom lip in embarrassment. “I might have to check the book for this one.”

Patrick watches in silence as Pete reaches underneath the table, hidden underneath one of the cushions was one of the books Pete bought in the shop; probably just as old as the cards if the yellowing pages and broken spine were anything to go by. Pete flipped the pages and Patrick followed the way Pete’s eyes scan paragraphs and the way he thumbs the handwritten notes he made on the margins. Pete’s eyes dart to look at Patrick every few seconds, and when he was finally done Pete raised his head to frown at Patrick, his forehead wrinkling the way it does when he’s confused.

“Don’t look at me like that, what’s it mean?” Patrick asks Pete, not liking the way Pete squints at him and purses his lips. Pete is quiet for a second as he thumbs the card thoughtfully.

“I do one card pulls for you, and it’s meant to amplify your surroundings enough for you to notice it around you. So the World card is called that because— the four winged beasts,” Pete points at the four animals by the corners, “these are the four signs of the zodiac and the four elements, they’re the four seasons, four directions; they’re the world, everything we are, everything the world is, is supposed to be represented by them.”

Pete shifts in the way he sits, drumming his fingers on the desk; this thing he does when he’s anxious. “Here in the middle, the angel, she’s holding the Magician’s wands, the wreath around her shows her moving into the future; the angel is supposed to symbolize you. So when you get the World card, it’s supposed to mean the end of a cycle and moving towards a newer part of your life.”

Patrick is silent for a heartbeat before he asks, his voice quiet, a slight tremble in the way he speaks, “But what does that mean for me?”

Pete purses his lips again, a frown cutting across his face, hesitantly he replies, “The way I’m understanding it is that when someone picks this card, it would be like— um. I guess if you were one of my clients, I would tell you to just— to stop. You’ve become so engrossed with your feelings that you don’t notice the world around you.”

Patrick watches silently as Pete begins to pick at his cuticles, Pete doesn’t meet Patrick’s eyes as he continues to explain, “I’d tell you to notice the smaller things the stars give you; for you to learn how to open your eyes instead of closing them, to listen closely and stay quiet so that your heart could speak for you  _ and _ to you.”

Pete’s voice continues, much softer now, “You need to break the cycle and routine that you're currently living in and start something new. So like— I guess, like that conversation we had the other night— about Wilson. Or is there anything else that you should be outgrown by now? Maybe it’s about work or—?”

Patrick watches the way Pete seems to hesitate, leave the sentence hanging to rest in the space between them. The room is so quiet Patrick’s ear begins to ring with it, its weight, the tension, settling on Patrick’s skin. There is curling anger and hurt that tightly fists Patrick's heart, squeezing and clutching it tighter and tighter until he knows all that’s pumping out is a bitterness that spreads to all over his bloodstream.

“I’m happy with my job right now, so that can’t be it.” Patrick replies flatly, unamused, his lips curled in something that should be a smile; it’s cutting enough to be a flesh wound. “So the  _ cards _ just so happen to tell me that I should go on that date with Wilson?”

Pete already looks defensive, cupping the World card as if to protect it. The card trembles in Pete’s hand, shaking and moving with the wind, except their window was closed so it must be a trick of the light. “Don’t say it like that.”

“Then don’t try to manipulate me.” Patrick snaps, teeth grinding uncomfortably as he tries to stop his mouth from getting the better of him, this time to say words he fully meant but in an ugly way, not like music and singing, somehow it was easier to say the words he knew how to hurt Pete; it sucks. “I said I’ll think about it. You don’t— you just don’t get it, Pete. This isn’t a cheap card trick, this isn’t magic,  _ this is my life _ you’re talking about. How do you think it feels to hear you say all of this? I’m doing the best that I can with what I have.”

“I’m only interpreting it the way the book taught me. I might be wrong. I’m not saying I’m right.” Pete says exasperatedly, the voice he uses when he knows Patrick is being dramatic and overreacting and needy and emotional and all those ugly things that Patrick knows gets under Pete’s skin and Patrick just  _ hates _ that Pete hates parts of Patrick.

“But you still said it,” Patrick replies viciously, cutting. This was the explosion of fireworks, of home-made bottle rockets that Patrick had been waiting for earlier. This is it again, everything that happened today was now spilling out of him. “Not everyone is lucky enough to be doing something like you, to have a good enough job that pays well and still have time to do something you love even though it’s  _ useless. _ I can’t even have a job that uses the fucking degree I wasted four years on.”

Patrick doesn’t even have to look at Pete’s heartbroken face to regret everything immediately, Pete had only ben telling the truth, but that hurt more than anything else Pete could have told him. The feeling is there, these violent waves of quickly fading anger and embarrassment and hurt and guilt— Patrick is a mess and it’s not even something that could be romanticized the way Pete could be. Patrick just shakes his head and exhales loudly, pushing himself off the floor to retreat to his room for the night before he says anything worse. Patrick is falling apart.

Pete stares up at Patrick and if Patrick didn’t know where to look, he’d think Pete was calmly surveying him; but Patrick catches the jut of Pete’s bottom lip, the shining look in his hurt eyes, the way his hands have a slight tremble in them. Patrick squeezes his eyes shut, the guilt makes his chest squeeze, and Patrick wishes that when he opens them everything that had happened was just a nightmare he had after falling asleep watching the movie, that when he opens his eyes, he’d find his head on Pete’s shoulder and the credits rolling on the screen; Patrick wishes he could live in this fantasy and not face the consequences of what he’s done. But Patrick does open his eyes and Pete is still there, the same frozen shocked look on his face at what Patrick had said.

“Listen, I—” Patrick sighs, curling his hand into a tight fist, nails digging painfully into his palm; he looks at anywhere but Pete. “I’ll just go to bed. Today was a bad day.”

It is a poor apology, it’s barely even one, and it’s definitely not something that Pete deserves but Patrick’s already made the small distance to his bedroom door, and Patrick doesn’t want to, but he turns around and sees Pete is still there where Patrick left him, his head down, staring at his hands. It’s scary to think that they can’t live without the other, it’s a thought that crosses its way into the front of Patrick’s mind as he waits for something to happen.

But nothing does and the night ends like that. Patrick slips into bed and stares outside his window, out into the starless sky; he can’t sleep. Patrick thinks he hears Pete’s footsteps come nearer until it stops right outside his door. Patrick sits up and watches the door, hoping that Pete would invite himself in just like he usually does, and he waits, he waits for Pete to make everything right because God and Pete know how prideful Patrick could be. Patrick waits for things to be the way they do in Patrick’s head; that is, it is dark and the moonlight hits Pete just right; that is, Pete’s soft voice, words that Patrick can’t imagine because words belong to Pete and music belongs to Patrick; that is, Patrick wants to rewind up until that time when they first moved here, two years ago, so he could make all the right decisions. But Pete never does and Patrick must he must have imagined it; his head in the clouds while the rest of him was in the hell he’s made for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for all the v sweet comments 🥺 im really embarrassed i really went off hdksjdjdjd im mostly doing well !! im currently on s11 of it’s always sunny, im playing stardew valley, i rewatched my mad fat diary & reignited my 2014 crush on my white boy of the century nico mirallegro as finn nelson and im having fun writing :) hope u all enjoyed this lil update. i hope u and your loved ones all continue to stay safe !!
> 
> [tumblr post](https://supersfade.tumblr.com/post/615122684553183232/scorpio-rising-break-the-palm-readers-hand)


	6. Chapter 6

_ [04/16/2020] : HAS FALLING IN LOVE WITH A FANTASY EVER WORKED OUT WELL FOR YOU? _

* * *

Patrick’s seated on the bus the next morning, this window seat that lets him look out of it to watch the city blend into different shades of cement gray, skyline blue, yellow and pink sunlight like pain streaks. The view looks as if a higher being had ripped out a picture from one of Pete’s cards and then stuck it on Their refrigerator door, a window to the view outside but on the opposite end from Patrick, with magnets bought at a Midwest gas station and from somewhere in Pluto if they had something like it. Patrick thinks this one would probably be named:  _ Looking Through the Glass _ . The card would mean something like the ache on the left side of Patrick’s chest, where he imagines a bloodstain slowly spreading on his polo shirt, this dagger pushing a tear through his heart. Patrick wishes that horoscopes and magic and tarot cards were real only for that chance to have the words to teach him how to get out of the puddle of his own blood, it was rising up to his ankles now. Patrick doesn’t know how long he can last.

Patrick’s hands fall to his lap and he is reminded of the heavy weight in his coat pocket that wasn’t normally there. It takes three stoplights of internal debate when Patrick finally reaches into his pocket. In there he finds the rough edges of the healing crystals Pete had pushed into his hands earlier with no explanation more than a ‘ _ be safe at work today’ _ . Pete’s voice was soft and delicate, sincere in the only way Pete knows how to be. Patrick knows their argument had eaten Pete up all night, overthinking and wondering what he could have done wrong; that’s just how Pete was hardwired, and Patrick sometimes took advantage of that in the same way Pete sometimes takes advantage of Patrick; but it doesn't matter because they both get hurt anyway. Patrick had only leaned in for half a hug, inhaling the morning smell of Pete, that is, sweaty linen sheets and day-old CK Eternity and muttered a quick goodbye before leaving (Reason number sixty-three: Pete’s been using the same cologne for years now, it’s comforting in all the best ways and reminds Patrick of home). Patrick still doesn’t get it, doesn’t even know what the crystals in his hands are supposed to mean, but he thinks he might appreciate it anyway, it came from Pete’s hands, of course he does.

The bus stops near Monroe and when the doors open, Patrick is thrown back to their first apartment six minutes away from the train station. It used to be their stop, where he and Pete, new to bustling downtown Chicago after being from the suburbs all their lives, would ride the train for hours and then get off at anywhere they agreed on; but if it had been up to Patrick, they could have lived forever on the L. Thinking about it now, Patrick realizes they haven’t done anything with just the two of them beyond being alive together in a while— Patrick isn’t sure if what he’s been doing lately counts as living. It makes Patrick stop for a second and think about the past few years. Patrick used to think he could live on love alone, but it’s that very thing that’s making his throat close up right now, the thing that makes his hand tremble, makes him ache inside. Patrick misses Pete all of a sudden, the real Pete, and not the one that Patrick has twisted into his fantasies. The Pete in the back of Patrick’s mind has made a room for himself; there is a bed, there is a record player that only plays Patrick’s voice, there is the blue wallpaper from Pete’s childhood bedroom, but there is no window; Patrick has twisted Pete to be his own hostage and the real one doesn't even know. There is a distance between them that is bigger than the forty-five minute commute to work. There is a thick guilt that creeps up Patrick’s throat, the late February morning suddenly feels more sinister; this view would be Patrick's own Death Card.

The bus stops again just as Patrick reaches into his pocket to text Pete; just to prove to himself that Pete is real and not something that he made up. Patrick stares at his phone screen and there is a split second of hesitation when Patrick realizes he doesn’t know what to say to Pete right now. Patrick bites down on his bottom lip as his fingers begin to tap mindlessly on his phone screen. Patrick looks at the sky, thinks of that time when Pete used to live in his parents’ place and Patrick lived in the dorms, how Pete would send crappy pictures of the moon or the view from outside his car window on the morning drive to work; Patrick looks at the dirty bus seats, thinks of all those times they sat arm to arm, head to head, how music always sounded better when Patrick wore the right earphone and Pete wore the left; Patrick feels the weight of the crystals in his pocket, thinks about how it’s a love song, an apology, in Pete’s own way. Patrick settles on texting Pete something Patrick wouldn’t have known the answer to just in case Pete really could be something he dreamt of,  _ hey, what are the crystals you gave me supposed to do? _

Patrick doesn't bother to wait for a reply from Pete, Pete’s probably still in bed at this hour; Pete’s normal sleeping schedule, not counting movie nights with Patrick to which he adjusts accordingly, is like this: wake up at 9 AM, go to sleep at 8 PM and wake up at midnight to write and read until sunrise, and it’s only when Pete sees the sun in the sky does he sleep again. Patrick moves to put his phone in his other pocket and when his hand reaches into it, right next to his wallet and the crystals, there is the foreign feeling of something thick and rough but small like a piece of paper that Patrick didn’t notice earlier. Pulling it out, praying that it wasn’t an overdue utility bill he forgot to pay for, Patrick finds the World card from last night. Pete must have slipped it in there while they hugged, meaning for it to be sweet and apologetic; Patrick mostly just aches at the sight of it and what it meant.

Looking at it, Patrick feels the world shift, rotating on its axis in small movements that Patrick shouldn’t feel underneath his feet, and it leaves him feeling a little lost and directionless; suddenly, the city feels unfamiliar, Pete is unfamiliar, the only familiar thing left was him and it was tragic in the way that he hasn’t changed; everything was changing without him and here he was going to his nine to five just like he has been for the past few years and here, unable to tell Pete how he feels for him. 

Patrick replays last night’s scene over and over in his head like a supercut. In his head, Patrick says the right things; that is, he doesn’t say the wrong things, doesn’t fight against Pete, isn’t cutting and mean and vicious and all the other things that make Patrick feel sticky with guilt inside; all the things that Patrick is sure Pete hates about him, what keeps them apart. In his dreams, Patrick is someone who has grown to fill in his shoes and the dreams he made for himself when he was younger; he’s someone Pete would want to be with; not who he is now. Mostly, Patrick thinks of  Pete reaching over the table, holding Patrick’s face with two hands; his calloused fingers holding Patrick delicately and Patrick would feel the blue inside of him turn into something else; maybe sunflower yellow or the pink of Pete’s lips; Patrick isn’t sure which one is more full of life. Pete would lean in and kiss Patrick and Patrick would taste the sunflowers in Pete’s mouth; because Patrick had given him that, and Pete would give him this one thing.

But then, reality catches up to Patrick the same way the bus jolts to a violent stop at a stoplight, and Patrick thinks of the look on Pete’s face last night, seriously thinks about it, and it felt like Patrick had woken up in that second, had been rudely woken up from this dream that he’s been tricking himself into believing for the past few years. Patrick thinks of it as sudden, but last night's look twists into the night before, and then last week's look, and then Patrick is thinking of every memory he could remember with Pete. He sees it now, in those little drawn out moments of overthinking everything,  Parick now realizes this: where he thought that there was something, there was nothing after all. Patrick had been dreaming, but he hadn’t been sleeping, his eyes had been open the whole time.

Patrick would think realizations like this would take a dramatic-heartbreaking moment, but this was different, there was nothing to destroy. Patrick sees it now in the way Pete had looked at him, seeing through Patrick, looking into Patrick’s eyes and only seeing his reflection there instead of begging oceans drawn to the big moons of Pete’s eyes. Patrick thinks of how this moment plays out in his dreams. When their knees touch like they did last night, it doesn’t go the way it should have done. There were no shy gazes; no fingers seeking out fingers; no loaded words; there was only Pete and Patrick underneath fluorescent lights and it isn’t so poetic even in the lonely moonlight of their living room. It’s only routine; routine in the sense that it’s not good or bad, it’s something they live with like how Patrick takes the bus every morning, how he checks for his keys and phone; routine the way the past two years have been, just like it always was, just like it always has been.  Something about the way he and Pete have been stuck together with something like bad glue over the years, it makes Patrick wonder if it’s finally time to cut it all loose. Maybe Pete had outgrown Patrick the same way he had outgrown his graffiti phase, and his poetry phase and sooner or later, his astrology phase too.

Patrick thinks that realizations like this would have,  _ should _ have felt more than they do. Patrick doesn’t feel like he’s choking, like he’s drowning and trying to keep his head above the surface of the ocean that has suddenly flooded into the bus. Patrick feels the same way he did before, but maybe, a little hollower, like there was now a hole where there was something once; maybe he should have taken his mom’s advice and become a doctor instead, maybe he’d know what he was suffering from right now. But then Pete and the looming threat of student debt had been there so, truthfully, Patrick doesn’t only have himself to blame for that choice; Patrick could blame the government as well.

The bus stops at a corner away from the clinic and Patrick gets off; feeling dizzy, the world spinning around him. Patrick stumbles and bumps into people as he tries to make his way down the street. Patrick’s waiting to cross the street when he feels his phone vibrate. Patrick can’t look away as he watches his phone light up his pocket. Briefly, he could make out the glow of the crystals shining back at him from underneath it. Patrick doesn’t pick it up quite yet, letting this moment of not knowing to extend along with the dizzy spell he’s still reeling from. Patrick reaches into his pocket and he rubs the crystals, hoping to find faith in it enough to want to leap towards something as he crosses with the crowd.

When Patrick does finally open his phone to read whoever had texted him at the next pedestrian, Patrick’s not surprised to find multiple texts from Pete. Patrick could almost trick himself into believing that Pete didn’t only text him because Patrick texted first, that there was a deeper meaning like how their minds were connected like that, through phone lines and brain waves, weird magic where when Patrick’s thoughts drift to Pete, Pete would suddenly appear; or maybe it was all just a coincidence and all of Pete’s declarations and speeches about listening to the stars and feeling the magic in the dust around them were starting to get to Patrick too; maybe it was nothing special, maybe Patrick just thought about Pete all the time until it becomes something to believe in.

When Patrick opens it, the first text he sees is a picture of Pete’s laptop screen, what looked like half an article ready to be sent to Pete’s editor on Friday when she asks for it. But Pete isn’t showing off the few times he does his actual real-life job that pays their bills and uses Pete’s Journalism degree, it’s of Joni lying down on Pete’s keyboard, eyes firmly closed but the motion of her tail was blurred indicating it was moving around the way it does when Joni was purposely being bratty and fighting for attention. A hint of Austen’s mouth and teeth are seen on the corner of the photo, nipping at Pete’s laptop. 

**Pete (8:57 AM)** _ I’m going to die a fucking unemployed cat lady because of these two _

And then texts from when Patrick thought he Pete asleep; if Patrick hadn’t assumed, he would have caught it earlier.  **Pete (8:20 AM):** _ black tourmaline and moonstone. you said you had a bad day at work yesterday. these will help, i promise _ .

**Pete (8:30 AM):** _I did your horoscope today. People are going to ask favors from you, you’re going to have to cancel some plans, and today is the best time to try to do something new !!!! listen to the signs the stars give u !! be happy— that one is just from me :)_

 **Pete (8:38 AM):** _Also_ _did you find my other present in your pocket yet?_

**Pete (8:38 AM):** _ Wait nvm don’t text and cross the street at the same time. Have a good day at work, sending u good vibes !! love youuuu _

Patrick doesn’t miss how his horoscope wasn’t vague at all; this was the first time his horoscope had been a to-do list more than a string of words that Patrick ultimately ignored. This one is a lot more difficult too, Patrick realizes, because there it is again, that piercing ache in Patrick’s chest, at this thing that he can’t have. Patrick always knew giving love away was something that he could easily to do, it was receiving it from someone that was the hard part. Patrick realizes at this second that Pete can give him words, magic, and antique furniture that holds Patrick’s love, and it’s still love from him, it still could be, but then Patrick can’t live on love alone anymore.

Patrick feels the street turn, another rotation on its axis, and maybe it was time Patrick moved along with it too; try something new today, be happy, listen to the signs the stars gave him. Maybe Patrick should stop trying to go against the crowd, he’s too old for that; the future isn’t as long as it used to look, it looked just as far as tonight, as the street corner from here; it’s not endless and full of possibilities anymore. 

_ I’ll go on that date with Wilson _ , Patrick thumbs waiting for the pedestrian sign to blink green, his hands going sweaty the way they do when he’s sending a risky text. Patrick doesn’t think about what he’s done. Instead, there is the brief memory of texting girls in college, of Pete daring Patrick to ask the girls he liked on dates, flashes in Patrick’s mind for a moment before Patrick stops it from going any further— he’s trying, he’ll get the hang of this, of not finding Pete there in everything he does; it will be hard, of course it will be, it’s been PeteAndPatrick for years now that Patrick’s forgotten how to be  _ just _ Patrick.

Pete replies immediately, a mess of letters and gibberish and key smashing,  _ I love you I love you I love you,  _ Pete sends with a hundred different colored heart emojis,  _ Patrick, thank you. You’re going to fucking love him. I’ll send his number to you. _

Patrick doesn’t reply, instead he thinks about it, types a few words, then deletes them all anyway. It continues as he walks and heads into the office and has greeted Joe, who handed Patrick coffee this morning because it was his turn. Patrick only replies once he’s seated behind his desk, settling on something safe and just a little hopeful and maybe even a little biting because he's still hurting.  _ He better be the love of my life, Pete.  _

**Pete:** _swear you guys will get married in two days and adopt like five kids the week after. you guys are made for each other_. _it will be that family you’ve always wanted, Trick._

Patrick puts his phone down after that, heart protesting at what Pete had said. That was it, the final push from the dagger that pierced Patrick’s little heart. Sometimes, Patrick thinks he knows everything about Pete, could answer him like a Sunday morning crossword puzzle, it will take some time and it might mean he’ll have to play dirty for a bit, but then Patrick would finish and wonder if Pete could do the same. Then something like this would happen, how Pete could figure him out with a kindness and sentimentality, this familiarity of moving your mouth in a certain way to mouth the words to a song you memorized years ago. Moments like now when Pete would say something from blackout drunk confessions or conversations on a passenger seat home back to the suburbs; everyone knows the words from times like those always mean the most and nothing at all, but then it was always everything to Pete because they came from Patrick’s mouth. Pete could hurt Patrick without even trying, even when he was trying to be kind, most especially when he was trying to be kind.

Patrick doesn’t reply to Pete's text.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rereading this chapter felt like reading my journal from my first yr in uni but im living someone else’s life lol sorry for the melodrama ! hope u enjoyed it still. listen to the new fiona apple & stay safe ❤️
> 
> [tumblr post](https://supersfade.tumblr.com/post/615755073093615616/scorpio-rising-break-the-palm-readers-hand)

**Author's Note:**

> hiii thanks for reading :D im really excited to see where this lil fic goes and i'd love to hear what you guys think of it so far :D see u next weekend for chapter 2 !
> 
> im also on tumblr as [supersfade](https://supersfade.tumblr.com/)


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